Advanced Features of Excel
Formula Types
Category
Logical
Date and Time
Text
Financial
Math and Trig
Examples
The most common logical function is the IF function, which we used
in the Student Grades exercise. But there are several others.
Logical functions are most often used to return a particular value
(TRUE or FALSE) to make a decision
Date and Time functions perform calculations based on Date and
Time formatted numbers. To represent the date format, Excel
automatically calculates a whole number that begins on 1/1/1900
(1), and runs sequentially through 12/31/9999 (2,958,465!) Excel
thinks of time as a fraction of a day, so every hour, minute, and
second has a decimal representation. For example, 12:00:00 PM is
represented as exactly .5 of a day. Using the decimal portion of a
number allows Excel to combine date and time into a single
number—for example 1/1/1900 at 12 PM is the number 1.5 to
Excel. Commonly used date and time functions include TODAY,
WEEKDAY, and DATEDIF
Text functions manipulate Text. They can be used to remove parts
of the text, add to the text, combine text, change case, etc.
Examples include UPPER and CONCATENATE.
Financial functions include functions to perform tasks like calculate
compounded interest, amount paid to principal, etc. No examples of
this function are used in class, due to the narrow professional
application of the functions.
Perform mathematical operations, and includes many of the most
common operations performed, including ROUNDUP, MAX,
AVERAGE, and SUM along with trigonometric functions.
These functions are included under More Functions, and engineers
Engineering and
and statisticians should be aware of their presence, but we don’t
Statistical
use them in our class.
Functions which refer to other cells and files to obtain information.
Lookup and Reference This includes the locations of cells, so that a lookup function could
get the value of a cell to be used in another formula—a very
advanced use of Excel! VLOOKUP is an example.
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Constructing Formulas...

All formulas must begin with an equal sign (=) to indicate that a calculation is about to follow.

To specify the number in a specific cell, use the cell’s name when creating a formula, for
example "=A1+B1"

To specify a range of cells, type the name of the first cell, followed by a colon, and then the
name of the last cell. For example, type “B1:B5” to specify all the numbers in the cells B1,
B2, B3, B4, and B5.

To indicate a specific type of calculation, you can use one of several functions, including
SUM, AVERAGE, etc. (A complete list of available functions can be found in the Insert
Function dialog box.)

Excel orders calculations by priority:
(
)
^
*
/
+
If, for example, the calculation is 2+2*5, Excel would multiply 2*5 first and then add 2. The
total would be 12. If we place parentheses around (2+2), that calculation will be performed
first before being multiplied by 5. The total would be 20.

Using External Reference Formulas: If you would like to have information from one sheet
included in calculations on another sheet, you can use an external reference formula. An
external reference formula is a formula containing references to cells not located in the
current sheet. When the information referenced is changed, the result of the formula is also
changed. Note that the sheet name is followed by the exclamation point and then followed
by the cell reference: "=SUM(sheetname!cellname)"

Using an IF Statement: Excel’s IF function can make decisions based on whether a test
condition is true or false. An IF statement can be written as follows: "=IF (what you want
tested, what to do if the result if true, what to do if the result if false)". Commas separate
each argument. Do not use spaces after the commas within the parenthesis. Example: To
perform a calculation of overtime, you could type =IF(B10>40,B10-40,0). You would be
telling the program to test if the number in cell B10 is greater than the number 40. If that is
the case, subtract the number 40 from the number in cell B10. If the number in cell B10 in
smaller than 40, the result is 0.
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Exercise #1: Customer Orders
Getting Started
1. Open the document “Customer Orders” from the Excel Exercises folder
2. Choose “Format as Table” from Home Tab > Styles group on the ribbon. Formatting your
data as a table is a good way to tell Excel that all of your data, including the headings,
belongs together.
3. Now enter the following in the first open row under the table (notice that the table
automatically expands to include the new data!)Use AutoFill (make sure your cursor is the
‘skinny plus sign’ by hovering over the bottom right corner of A77 and then drag and drop to
A78) to copy the order number from A77 to A78.
4. Now click on the little button that pops up beside A78
and choose “Fill series”. This button is the Auto-Fill
options button, and it will often provide a variety of
helpful choices when you are pasting data, including
keeping or discarding formatting and incrementing
numbers (note that you don’t want to use the formula
=A77+1 to increment, as this can be changed when you
sort your data!)
ADD COLUMN FOR “Days to Process”
1. Insert a column before the “Customer” column (Column E) either by right-clicking on the
column header and choosing “Insert…” or by selecting column E in its entirety and then
clicking Insert on the Home tab > Cells group.
2. Type “Days to Process” in cell E1. When you have a table in Excel, it’s best to have
headings so the data is identified.
3. Page 2 of this packet describes how Excel handles Date and Time data and formulas—for
now, we will create a formula that figures out how long it takes for us to ship orders from the
order date.
4. Create formula to calculate Days to process order: Enter the following formula in Cell E2:
=DATEDIF(use the mouse to select C2,use the mouse to select D2, “d”)
5. Note that Excel will automatically realize that we want this formula throughout the entire
table. DATEDIF is a special function that is not in the Help feature and cannot be found in
the “Insert Function” menu. The syntax is =DATEDIF (Start Date, End Date, Interval). Start
Date and End Date are usually cell references (as in our case), and the interval is “d” for
number of days, “m” for number of months, and “y” for number of years.
6. But there’s a problem – all of our DATEDIF results are dates, and they should just be
numbers (representing a number of days). We can change this by going to the Home Tab
and choosing the number format with the drop down menu (that currently says “Date”) in the
number group. Notice that when we choose the number it has two decimal places by
default—thinking of how Excel handles dates and times, can you see how this might be
useful? In our case, just change the decimal places to zero by clicking the Decrease Decimal
button twice (remember—this button is on the Number group of the Home tab).
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MORE DATE AND TIME FUNCTIONS
1. Insert a new column F
2. Put label on column “Day Ordered”
3. As before, choose the first cell (F2) and enter this formula: =WEEKDAY(use the mouse to
select C2) The WEEKDAY function will return a single digit number (1-7) telling us what day
it is.
4. Make sure column F is selected and go to the format dropdown in the Number section of the
Home ribbon. Select the more number formats at the bottom. In the dialog box that opens,
select custom. Type dddd into the box under Type: and press OK. This will show the actual
name of the weekday.
TEXT FUNCTIONS
1. Move to sheet 2. Change the sheet name to “Telephone List”.
2. Type “Date Printed” in cell A1.
3. Type the formula =TODAY() in B1. This formula will return the current date – very useful for
many reasons, but especially useful for calculating elapsed.
4. OK, back to making our phone list! Type headers in A2 and B2: Customer and Phone
Number (A2) and State (B2).
5. In cell A3, type this formula: =CONCATENATE(click on Sheet1 cell G2 with your mouse ,
“ enter 5 spaces “ , click on Sheet1 cell L2 with your mouse ).
6. Double check before you hit ENTER – the finished formula should look like this:
=CONCATENATE(Sheet1!G2," ",Sheet1!L2).
7. Now use the Autofill feature to copy your formula down the column. If you go far down the
spreadsheet, your data will fill in as it is updated, so drag down to cell 300 or so. Since the
cells being combined are currently blank, the column will not look like anything is there, but
there will be 5 spaces! The concatenate function is useful for combining data from different
cells into a single cell, and is commonly used for items like addresses.
8. In Column B on the “Telephone List” sheet, let’s fix a common data entry error: In Cell B3,
type the formula =UPPER(Sheet1!J2). This formula will convert all text to upper case (useful
for example, for addresses, which the USPS prefers be in upper case).
FILTERING AND SORTING DATA IN A TABLE
1. Before we do Pivot tables, note the little arrows next to the headers on our data table—note
that you can filter this data table by clicking on a down arrow next to the header you are
interested in. You can also sort the data in the same way.
2. Pivot tables will allow you to do this as well, but a little more in depth. They’ll also allow you
to perform calculations and really make your data work for you!
PIVOT TABLES
3. Pivot Tables can’t have blank columns in them or blank rows, but individual cells can be
blank.
4. To create a pivot table, click on the insert tab and choose the Pivot Table button.
5. A box will pop up and you must choose a table or a range for the Pivot Table to pull data
from. If you have already made a table, Excel will usually just recognize it and fill in your
range for you. Excel will also suggest a range that matches the area it thinks is a table if you
have not actually formatted your data as a table.
6. You must choose whether you want the data on a new worksheet or on your current sheet.
It’s usually best to use a new worksheet.
7. It’s also usually best to use only one Pivot Table per sheet.
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8. To create a report, simply choose the categories you need from the Pivot Table Field List on
the right—for example
9. Place a check mark on Price, then place a check mark on State
10. That easily, we have created a report that gives us the sum of merchandise sold by state.
11. Now look closely at the “Row Labels” section –we can filter out the states we aren’t
interested in at the moment by clicking here and getting a drop down menu to choose which
states we want to look at and leave the others out.
12. And we don’t have to do a SUM—go ahead and double click on the “Sum of Price” header
and choose AVERAGE instead
13. Now change it back to SUM.
14. Let’s add a little more detail—Add the cities in by dragging the City field to the Row Labels
section. Be sure and drop it BELOW the State label (it should fit below State in the
hierarchy!)
15. And let’s add even more—drag the Customer field down as well, dropping it below the City
field
PIVOT CHARTS
1. Pivot Charts work a lot like Pivot tables, except you can create a chart with them, instead of
tabular data.
2. Be sure and choose a new worksheet again when you create a Pivot Chart. One thing to
remember about Pivot Tables and Charts is that they can’t overlap each other, so you should
try and keep one per sheet.
3. You can select the fields you want displayed in the chart in the same manner (by dragging
them to the Axis, Legend, or Sum Areas).
4. You can also use the Chart tools to choose the chart type and other modifications.
5. For example, let’s create a pie chart to show our sales by state:
6. Click anywhere in the table on Sheet 1. Click on the Insert tab, then click on the words
“Pivot Chart” in the Charts section of the Insert tab and select “Pivot Chart”.
7. Excel automatically chooses the whole table, but you could select a different range in this
popup window. Likewise, the default option is a new worksheet, but you could put it in the
same sheet—a new worksheet works best for each Pivot Chart or Pivot Table.
8. Close the Pivot Chart Filter Pane window that pops up when your chart is created—the
actions you can perform with this can also be performed using the Pivot Chart field list to the
right
9. In the Pivot Chart field list, drag the “State” field to the “Axis” portion of the chart. This sets
the categories for your chart.
10. Now drag the “Price” field to the “Values” portion. It will create a “Sum of” field by default
11. But wait, the chart is wrong! We wanted a pie chart and this is a column chart. To change the
chart, we need to select it, click on the Pivot Chart tools Design tab. In the Type section
select “Change Chart Type”. In the box that pops up select “Pie” in the menu on the left,
then select the first pie chart option and click “Ok”.
12. While still in the Design tab for your Pivot Chart, click Quick Layout in the Chart Layouts
section and select Layout 1
13. Finally, click on the “Total” title box and replace “Total” with “Sales by State”
The remaining items are not critical to understanding Additional Features of
Excel. Both are types of data entry controls, and can be used to make your
data entry a little more accurate, but neither Data Validation or the Vlookup
function are necessary to using Excel effectively.
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This course is designed to emphasize Linked Cells, PivotTables, Pivot Charts, and advanced
formulas, so as long as you understand these, you’ve got the main ideas down. If the pace of
the class allows, your teacher may cover these in class.
DATA VALIDATION
1. Return to Sheet 1.
2. In addition to correcting common data entry errors, it is also possible to set columns in a
table so that erroneous data cannot be entered.
3. Click on column D and then click on Data Validation.
4. Set the popup to the following:
5. Notice the start date is the day of the
order, and the end date is the
current date – no product could be
shipped before it was ordered, and
no item could be entered as shipped
in the future.
6. You can customize the error
message and put in a message that
comes up before people enter data,
but most of the time the default
message is clear enough. If you did
wish to customize the messages you
would use the additional tabs.
7. Look at Cell D18 – notice the tiny
green triangle in the upper left
corner? That means there is a Data
Validation error in this cell that was there before we turned on Data Validation. 10/1/2013 is
before 10/6/2013, and there’s no way we could have shipped an item before it was ordered.
Try entering a date before 10/6/2013 (the date of the order) or after today’s date and see
what happens. In the popup window that comes up click “Retry” and enter the corrected date
of 10/13/2013. Notice you can’t even re-enter the incorrect data now!
VLOOKUP FUNCTION
1. Let’s experiment with another version of data control, the VLOOKUP function.
2. Choose column H and insert a column on Sheet1 called ‘Region’.
3. Regions are already set up on Sheet 3 (already named Region), so we won’t need to enter
them. In a ‘real’ situation all 50 states would be entered, but we’re only using states we’ve
had orders from.
4. When using the VLOOKUP function, your lookup array (remember—an array is just a set of
associated values, like KY and Southeast, NY and Northeast, etc. We used an array in our
Grades exercise.) must already be sorted in ascending order.
5. To enter the function, click in cell H2 and type =VLOOKUP( click on cell K2 on Sheet1,
Regions!$A$1:$B$19,2)
6. The dollar signs are necessary for the array on Region—remember the difference between
absolute and relative references, taught in exercise #1. Also, the 2 in the formula refers to
the column that is being used to lookup the value. Essentially Excel is looking for the state
and then putting the region into the cell that matches the state on the same row.
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Self-Evaluation: Additional Features of Excel
Please keep this form for your own reference.
Evaluate your understanding of the following topics. Be sure to ask your instructor to clarify any
concepts you find confusing.
Topic
very clear
clear
a little
confused
very
confused
Renaming worksheets and adding color
Creating formulas
Using office assistant to search for
functions
Cell ranges (cell:cell)
Inserting cells
Linking cells
Sample functions (SUM, AVERAGE,
ROUNDUP, IF)
Advanced formula types (general
concepts)
Date and Time formulas (TODAY,
WEEKDAY, DATEDIF)
Text formulas (CONCATENATE,
UPPER)
Creating a Table
Sorting and Filtering a Table
Examining Data and Creating Reports
with Pivot Tables and Charts
**Optional: using Data Validation and
Lookup functions
IMPORTANT:
Before moving onto the next class, you should answer
“very clear” or “clear” to most of the above.
If you need further help with these topics, consider taking the class again
after practicing your skills independently.
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