{"id":923,"date":"2013-11-08T11:04:37","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T18:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/?p=923"},"modified":"2013-11-08T11:04:37","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T18:04:37","slug":"excel-tips-formulas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/excel-tips-formulas\/","title":{"rendered":"Excel Tips: Formulas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Excel formulas are used to act on numbers or other data in Excel spreadsheets.\u00a0 The basic ones are easy to use and very rewarding.\u00a0 Some of the more difficult ones, like VLOOKUP (which searches for one value and returns a corresponding value in another column; for example using VLOOKUP on \u201cPat\u201d in a hypothetical list of people tells me she is 8<sup>th<\/sup> on the list), have the potential to be very rewarding but require some time to learn and get right.\u00a0 Formulas become more useful, and even necessary, if you have more data in your spreadsheet.<\/p>\n<p>Example:<\/p>\n<p>=AVERAGE(<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">A2:A7<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>This formula would give you the average of all the numbers in the cells <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">A2<\/span> to <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">A7<\/span>.\u00a0 The <strong>equal sign<\/strong> is necessary to make Excel understand that you are using a formula. \u00a0The <strong>range<\/strong> you intend the formula to act on goes between the parentheses, and can be either typed in or selected by highlighting the desired cells.\u00a0 You can also choose individual cells to use as the range.\u00a0 Note that if you change any number in any cell in the range, the answer in the cell with the formula will change as well.\u00a0 The <strong>formula itself<\/strong> is usually a word or set of letters that Excel assigns a meaning.\u00a0 The most basic are AVERAGE and SUM, with obvious properties.<\/p>\n<p>You can also do regular math in Excel.\u00a0 For example, =<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">E7<\/span>+<span style=\"color: #008000;\">F8<\/span>*<span style=\"color: #e105f9;\">H8<\/span>&#8211;<span style=\"color: #993300;\">G8<\/span>\/<span style=\"color: #00ff00;\">E8<\/span> does the required math for you and spits out the answer in the cell where the formula was entered.\u00a0 (Excel follows order of operations.)\u00a0 It\u2019s even better than a calculator, in that if you decide to change the value of <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">E7<\/span>, the answer in the cell with the formula changes as well.<\/p>\n<p><em>By ITA, Hillary Shipps<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Excel formulas are used to act on numbers or other data in Excel spreadsheets.\u00a0 The basic ones are easy to use and very rewarding.\u00a0 Some &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,42,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft-excel","category-microsoft-office","category-tips-and-tricks"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/itfits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}