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functions are a great time-saving option
for calculating data in your worksheet
they can be used in place of formulas
when a formula would be too long or just
too complicated to write out manually to
access the function library go to the
formulas tab on the ribbon here you'll
find hundreds of functions to choose
from
they've all been organized into
categories to make them easier to find
for example under financial you'll find
functions that deal with things like
interest and monthly payments under text
you can perform text manipulations like
converting lowercase to uppercase
replacing text and more date and time
includes functions that return the
current date time day of the week and
other useful data some of the most
common functions are pretty simple
though like sum and average you can
access these using the drop down arrow
under Auto sum in this example I'd like
to add these ten cells to calculate the
total if I tried to create a formula for
that I'd have to add each cell
individually not only would that be
tedious it would also make the formula
really long especially if I had say a
hundred cells that I wanted to add so
instead of creating a formula I'm going
to use a function first select the cell
where you want the answer to appear then
choose a function in our case we'll open
the autosum menu and then choose sum now
Excel has inserted the function and also
selected the cells that are being added
together if it selects the wrong cells
you can always change that by dragging
the corner handles here when you're done
press ENTER on your keyboard and the
answer will appear let's look at this
function in a little more detail just
like formulas functions always start
with an equal sign but you may have
noticed that there are no mathematical
operators such as addition or
subtraction like you would normally see
in a formula instead functions use a
specific syntax that includes the name
of the function followed by one or more
arguments in parentheses
the arguments tell the function which
sells our numbers to use when
calculating the result in this example
we only have one argument even though
there are two different cell references
this is called a range of cells or a
cell range a cell range is represented
by two different cell references with a
colon in between in this case the range
consists of all the cells between d3 and
d12 if you want to use more than one
argument you'll need to separate each
one with a comma let's try a different
function now in this example we have a
column for the date that each item was
ordered and the date that it was
received what I'd like to know is how
many business days it took for each item
to be delivered first select the cell
where you want the function to go then
choose a function if you know what
category it's in if you don't you can
try searching for it instead just click
the insert function command on the far
left of the ribbon searching for
functions can be tricky but for more
experienced users this can be an
extremely useful tool just type a
description of the function you're
looking for I'm looking for something
that'll count the number of days that
have elapsed so I'll type count days and
then press Enter we've gotten a lot of
different results here to learn more
about a function just click the name and
a description will appear below the
function called Network days returns the
number of workdays between two dates and
that's exactly what we want so I'm just
going to click OK and another dialog box
will appear there will be separate
fields for each argument in the function
this function has up to three arguments
start date and date and holidays when
you click a field you'll see a
description of it below and if you need
more help you can click the link that
says help on this function for the start
date I'm going to select cell e3 and for
the end date I'll select f3 we know the
holidays argument is optional because
it's not in bold so I'm going to leave
that one blank
before you continue you can check the
result of the function here when you're
ready click OK and the function will be
added to the worksheet just like with
formulas you can copy the function using
the fill handle here and now we can see
the number of business days it took for
each item to be delivered if you've
never used functions before the syntax
may seem a little strange at first but
with some practice you're bound to get
the hang of it and soon you'll be using
your favorite functions over and over