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Functions

ResolvedVersion 2003

Wed 29 Apr 2009, 16:21 Delegate vanessa said...

vanessa has attended:
Excel Intermediate course

Functions

What is a function?

Wed 29 Apr 2009, 19:10 Trainer David said...

RE: Functions

Hi Vanessa

Welcome to the forum and now 12 months support.

A function is a piece of code designed to calculate specific values and are used inside formulas. Functions to sum values, calculate a trigonometric cosine, and to calculate the current time are built into excel. Additional functions can be defined using Visual Basic.

Functions are typed alongside parenthesizes, where in the arguments if any are listed in between. To use functions in a formula, for example

=today() will return the current date
=NOW() returns the current time.
=SUM(1+2+3) *2 will multiply the sum by 2

It does not matter if you type them in lower or upper case.

Hope this helps

Best Team

Wed 6 May 2009: Automatically marked as resolved.

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Excel tip:

Converting an American date format to European using Formula

Excel depending on your local setting will only pick up date values of the dd mmm yyyy oders as date type. If you import data from various sources including America their date order is different with data value in mmm dd yyyy, excel can only treat it as text indicated by left aligning it. To overcome this you have to do the the following.

1. Extract the date components mmm dd yyyy, by using the the Text functions LEFT, MID or RIGHT

2. Reorder dd mmm component and concatenate using "&" in the right order this will create a text string with the date in the right order it then needss to be converted to a value so excel can recognise it.

3. To convert to value encase in TEXT function.

4. Format to desired date format.

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Functions

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Excel tip:

Converting an American date format to European using Formula