Excel Formulas & Functions For Dummies (6^th Ed.)

There's a Swiss Army knife in your digital toolbox that can multiply your productivity and make you the smartest guy or gal in almost any room. It's called Microsoft Excel.

If you're like most people, you've barely scratched the surface of what this powerful tool's hundreds of built-in functions can do. But with a little help from Excel Formulas & Functions For Dummies, you'll soon be organizing, analyzing, and interpreting data like a pro.

For those who don't know the difference between a spreadsheet and a bedsheet, the book gets you up to speed with formula and function basics first. But you can also skip ahead to the fancy stuff and learn about working with probabilities, significance tests, and lookup functions.

This easy-to-use Excel formulas and functions survival guide shows you how to:

• Work with financial functions like PMT, PPMT, NPER, RATE, and PV
• Calculate mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and many more statistical functions
• Troubleshoot formulas for common errors and validate your data to avoid mistakes
• Work with dates, times, logic operators, conditions, and basic and advanced mathematical functions

You don't need a degree in data science or advanced mathematics to take advantage of the full functionality and flexibility of Microsoft Excel. Let Excel Formulas & Functions For Dummies show you how to transform this unassuming program into the most useful tool in your toolbox.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 3

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Getting Started with Excel Formulas and Functions 5

Chapter 1: Tapping Into Formula and Function Fundamentals 7

Chapter 2: Saving Time with Function Tools 39

Chapter 3: Saying “Array!” for Formulas and Functions 55

Chapter 4: Fixing Formula Boo-Boos 65

Part 2: Doing the Math 83

Chapter 5: Calculating Loan Payments and Interest Rates 85

Chapter 6: Appreciating What You’ll Get, Depreciating What You’ve Got 105

Chapter 7: Using Basic Math Functions 121

Chapter 8: Advancing Your Math 139

Part 3: Solving with Statistics 161

Chapter 9: Throwing Statistics a Curve 163

Chapter 10: Using Significance Tests 203

Chapter 11: Rolling the Dice on Predictions and Probability 213

Part 4: Dancing with Data 231

Chapter 12: Dressing Up for Date Functions 233

Chapter 13: Keeping Well-Timed Functions 251

Chapter 14: Using Lookup, Logical, and Reference Functions 261

Chapter 15: Digging Up the Facts 297

Chapter 16: Writing Home about Text Functions 311

Chapter 17: Playing Records with Database Functions 337

Part 5: The Part of Tens 353

Chapter 18: Ten Tips for Working with Formulas 355

Chapter 19: Ten Ways to Get Fancy with Excel 369

Chapter 20: Ten Really Cool Functions 375

Work with Hexadecimal, Octal, Decimal, and Binary Numbers 376

Convert Units of Measurement 377

Find the Greatest Common Divisor and the Least Common Multiple 378

Easily Generate a Random Number 379

Convert to Roman Numerals 379

Factor in a Factorial 379

Determine Part of a Year with YEARFRAC 380

Find the Data TYPE 380

Find the LENgth of Your Text 381

Just in CASE 381

Index 383 

Ken Bluttman is a veteran software and web developer specializing in Excel/VBA and database-centric web applications. He has written articles and books on topics like Office/VBA development, XML, SQL Server, and InfoPath. Ken is the author of Excel Charts For Dummies and all previous editions of Excel Formulas & Functions For Dummies.