Microsoft Excel Tutorial for Beginners: Lesson 4

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Excel Formulas & Functions: Learn with Basic EXAMPLES​

Formulas and functions are the building blocks of working with numeric data in Excel. This article introduces you to formulas and functions.

In this article, we will cover the following topics.

What is Formulas in Excel?
Mistakes to avoid when working with formulas in Excel
What is Function in Excel?
The importance of functions
Common functions
Numeric Functions
String functions
Date Time functions
V Lookup function

 

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Tutorials Data​

For this tutorial, we will work with the following datasets.

Home supplies budget

S/N	ITEM	QTY	PRICE	SUBTOTAL	Is it Affordable?
1	Mangoes	9	600
2	Oranges	3	1200
3	Tomatoes	1	2500
4	Cooking Oil	5	6500
5	Tonic Water	13	3900

 

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House Building Project Schedule

S/N	ITEM	START DATE	END DATE	DURATION (DAYS)
1	Survey land	04/02/2015	07/02/2015
2	Lay Foundation	10/02/2015	15/02/2015
3	Roofing	27/02/2015	03/03/2015
4	Painting	09/03/2015	21/03/2015

 

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What is Formulas in Excel?​

FORMULAS IN EXCEL is an expression that operates on values in a range of cell addresses and operators. For example, =A1+A2+A3, which finds the sum of the range of values from cell A1 to cell A3. An example of a formula made up of discrete values like =6*3.
=A2 * D2 / 2

 

[soybean]

HERE,

• "=" tells Excel that this is a formula, and it should evaluate it.
• "A2" * D2" makes reference to cell addresses A2 and D2 then multiplies the values found in these cell addresses.
• "/" is the division arithmetic operator
• "2" is a discrete value

 

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Formulas practical exercise​

We will work with the sample data for the home budget to calculate the subtotal.

• Create a new workbook in Excel
• Enter the data shown in the home supplies budget above.
• Your worksheet should look as follows.

 

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We will now write the formula that calculates the subtotal

Set the focus to cell E4

Enter the following formula.

=C4*D4

 

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HERE,

• "C4*D4" uses the arithmetic operator multiplication (*) to multiply the value of the cell address C4 and D4.

Press enter key

You will get the following result

 

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The following animated image shows you how to auto select cell address and apply the same formula to other rows.

 

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Mistakes to avoid when working with formulas in Excel​

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1. Remember the rules of Brackets of Division, Multiplication, Addition, & Subtraction (BODMAS). This means expressions are brackets are evaluated first. For arithmetic operators, the division is evaluated first followed by multiplication then addition and subtraction is the last one to be evaluated. Using this rule, we can rewrite the above formula as =(A2 * D2) / 2. This will ensure that A2 and D2 are first evaluated then divided by two.
   
   
2. Excel spreadsheet formulas usually work with numeric data; you can take advantage of data validation to specify the type of data that should be accepted by a cell i.e. numbers only.
   
   
3. To ensure that you are working with the correct cell addresses referenced in the formulas, you can press F2 on the keyboard. This will highlight the cell addresses used in the formula, and you can cross check to ensure they are the desired cell addresses.
   
   
4. When you are working with many rows, you can use serial numbers for all the rows and have a record count at the bottom of the sheet. You should compare the serial number count with the record total to ensure that your formulas included all the rows.