These inputs have a special name: arguments.
Let’s look at some examples.
Arguments can be required or optional.
Some functions take three or more arguments, and some functions don’t take any arguments at all.
A good example of a function that takes no arguments is theTODAY function, which returns the current date.
To use it, just enter an equal sign, TODAY, and empty parentheses.
Other functions take multiple arguments; all of which are required.
The current argument will be displayed in bold text.
Each additional argument must be separated with a comma.
As you enter arguments and commas, you’ll see each argument bolded in turn.
Note that Excel doesn’t care whether commas are followed by spaces or not.
Some functions have optional arguments, which are shown in square brackets inside the formula tip window.
An example of a function that takes an optional argument is theROW function.
Without any arguments, ROW returns the row of the cell it’s located in.
However, if you supply a reference, ROW returns the row number of that reference.
For example, if we supply H10 as the reference, ROW returns the number 10.
Some functions can take a large number of optional arguments.
A good example is theSUM function.
The SUM function can actually accept up to 256 arguments total.
Excel will then add the commas for you.
Instead, you’ll supply values that come from other cells.
When you expose arguments as cells on the worksheet, you might supply cell references as arguments.
This allows you to easily change the input values later, and get a different result from the function.
