What is a function?

Abstract

Transcript

What’s a function?

A function is a special jot down of formula.

Excel has hundreds of functions.

To introduce the idea of a function, we’ll look at theSUM function.

The SUM function is one of the most useful and widely used functions in Excel.

Its purpose is to add things up.

Let’s take a look.

Here we have a worksheet with several labeled cell references.

We have the individual cells B7 and D6, and the ranges F7:F9 and H8:H11.

Let’s work through the formula examples.

And if we want to add cells in the range F7:F9, we can use =F7+F8+F9.

But this will get tedious quickly as the ranges we are adding get bigger.

What we really need is a way to sum ranges directly.

What we need is the SUM function.

Excel calculates the result.

We can do the same thing for range H8:H11.

The SUM function takes one or more arguments, which is just a fancy way of saying inputs.