What are Excel Functions?
Introduction
Hello everyone! How are you guys doing? In this post, I'm gonna provide a brief overview of functions in Excel.
Functions are basically predefined formulas that the nice people at Microsoft have created for us to use.
They are very useful because you can perform many different kinds of calculations that will make cleaning the data much more efficient.
Excel Function Syntax
A function always starts with the EQUALS SIGN. From the most basic Excel function to the most advanced function that you can ever type in your whole life, it will always always always start with the equals sign.
After the equals sign comes the FUNCTION NAME. These are the predefined formulas. If you don't know any function names, then you can go to "Formulas" ribbon to see hundreds, if not thousands, of built-in formulas.
After you put in the function name, you must specify the ARGUMENTS. The arguments basically specify the cells that will be used as part of the calculation.
Here's a very basic example:
As you can see, the function starts with an equals sign. Then, the function name is highlighted in orange. The blue numbers represent the arguments of the function. Essentially, this function called SUM adds up all the values within the cells B4 and B9.
Obviously, there are many other Excel functions besides SUM. The most basic ones include COUNT, AVERGAE, MIN, MEDIAN, and MAX.
If you want to look at a comprehensive list of ALL the Excel function names, you can check out this link.
Conclusion
That's it for this post and thank you for reading! I hope you found this brief overview of Excel functions helpful and I hope you have a good day!