101 Ready-to-Use Excel Formulas

Book Preface

Formulas are the true engines of Excel. Employing various Excel functions, formulas enable Excel analysts to create aggregated reporting, complex calculation engines, clever dashboard models, and much more. Indeed, Excel analysts become more productive as their proficiency with Excel functions and formulas improves.

But building proficiency with Excel functions and formulas takes time. Given that Excel contains more than 400 functions, you could spend months, even years, learning which functions are best for certain tasks and which functions can be combined with others functions.

Unfortunately, many analysts don’t have the luxury of taking a few weeks’ time-out to learn all they need to know about Excel functions and formulas. The scenarios and issues they face require solutions now.

This is where 101 Ready-to-Use Excel Formulas comes in. This book approaches Excel formulas with the assumption that “learning” comes with accomplishing core tasks. Instead of offering the usual general overview of Excel formula writing, this book provides 101 of the most commonly used, real-world Excel formulas.

For each formula covered, we outline a common problem that needs to be solved and provide the actual Excel formula to solve the problem, along with detailed explanations of how the formula works. This approach lets you use this book as a handy reference for finding a formula that solves a common problem.

After reading about a given formula, you should be able to

• Immediately implement the needed Excel formula
• Understand how the formula works
• Reuse the formula in other workbooks