About the Author

Why does Sohail Anwar care so much about Excel? Surely hes a Microsoft salesman? Not quite. Frankly,
becoming very, very good with Excel over time has helped him tremendously to build a career in all
manner of Analytical and Management roles in the Financial Services, IT & Government largely by
applying Excel to solve real world problems. In 2005 he barely knew what an Excel cell was and he
earned slightly over the national average salary; in 2015 he can do everything but create human life with
Excel and has consistently been earning well over a 6 figure salary (British s) for several years.
Having put in over 10,000 hours of applying Excel in the workplace and teaching others to not only learn
the best of Excel quickly and efficiently, but to then translate that into higher earnings, he is now on a
mission to teach lots more people all they need to learn about Excel to earn a lot more money.
But if you go over to Earn and Excel, which is Sohails Blog, you will find a wealth of information on not
just Excel but the best advice you will come across on progressing your career.

INTRODUCTION
Why Excel Formulas?
Theres more to Excel than formulas, there are charts, data functions, tables, macros, VBA, etc., so why
just focus on formulas?
Formulas are the best place to start to attack your improvement; many other uses of Excel revolve
around formulas, and formulas will help you accomplish the majority of the problem solving you need to
do in Excel on a day to day basis.
With that in mind, there are around 300-350 formulas (depending on your version of Excel) so one of
the major benefits of this book is to help you narrow it down to the core formulas that you should focus
your precious little time on so you can get on with developing other crucial career/work skills rather
than spending too much time unnecessarily mastering Excel.
What do you mean by Money Formulas? Do you mean financial formulas?

No. I mean these formulas are on the money and focusing your efforts on applying them in your work
will set you on the path to ultimately earning more money. Granted, theres other things you need to be
good at in Excel and outside of Excel, but I am focusing on getting just one aspect right. When you have
many areas to improve in and a limited time to do so, it helps to have someone who has been there and
done that to narrow things down for you

What was that promise?

The only formulas you need to learn to earn more money. The ONLY formulas? Really?
Yes.

So youre telling me if I learn just these formulas I will earn more money?
What I am telling you is this. If your rear end is sitting on a chair most of the day as you stare at a
screen(s) in some professional capacity, Excel is your friend and if you learn it and apply it correctly, well
then, Excel can be your best friend (just dont open conversations at a party with My best friend is
Excel, unless its a Microsoft party, even then its probably a no no).
Excel is a vast tool with many applications. Most people can easily get lost in what to learn, how to learn
it and where to learn it. The information overload can lead to spinning your wheels and giving up in
frustration. Ive worked alongside many people who initially gave up with Excel. Many of these folks
were quite non-technical and they really struggled. A few pointers in the right direction from me
boosted their confidence at using Excel to solve work related problems and most of them went on to
earn significantly more salary than they were previously doing.

But why would the geniuses at Microsoft invest time in creating all those other formulas?!
Because they have developed a complete product with incredible levels of application for tasks and
problems in all shapes and sizes to be applied across a huge range of sectors. They have monopolised
the spreadsheet product market because Excel is the de facto spreadsheet tool in just about any office
anywhere.
Many of the formulas I will tell you not to bother with because you are (or will be) professionals in the
roles/industries previously discussed and while these certainly do have uses, they are few and far
between. Very specialist engineering, niche finance/economic modelling, scientific researchers perhaps,
most of the applications in fact are in or tied to the academic sphere. And even then many folks will use
much more powerful and purposeful niche products for modelling, such as Matlab, Hadoop or just plain
old SQL so weve rendered most of those formulas useless still!

So, who is most likely to benefit from this book?

In terms of Experience level, this book caters to the inexperienced level, but the discussions are suitable
for much more experienced folks and the latter can feel free to skip some of the explanations of the
formulas if you know them. Though please take heed to the message and the actual Money Formulas
themselves. I know many experienced users who have stagnated in their Excel progress and they think
what next?. Youll get some great answers in this book
In terms of what you lovely folks are or might be doing, you will be or want to aspire to be in the
following sectors/ careers:

Financial Services (Banking, Accounting, Insurance), IT, Energy, Telecommunications, Retail (Head
office), Supply Chain, Government etc. Pretty much all Analyst roles, Management Consultants, Finance
professionals, Change Management and Project Professionals (especially PMO).
Professionals who am I not talking about: Lawyers for law related work (still great for other office work if
youre running your own practice).

And in what way will it benefit?

Consider this book a resource that aims to steer you lovely professionals (and wannabe professionals) in
the right direction to understanding which Excel formulas will be most useful in your career and it will
steer you there quickly and efficiently.

1. When to use what formula

The question I get more than any from those Ive helped, and the question I had myself when starting
out with Excel, was How do I know when to use a particular formula? So before we go into more depth
about the formulas I want to create a few categories in which well put the formulas into. These
categories represent what Excel does for you. Putting the formulas into these categories will help us
narrow down the appropriate formulas to use in any given situation.
First, make sure your information is in a long boring list (if theres a lot of it). More on long boring lists in
a moment.
As you become more experienced at writing formulas, your formulas will cross over into multiple
categories (possibly even all of them).
1. Summarising Information
AKA The end game. Are you creating a nice looking report/dashboard, a table for a sweepstakes at
work, just one number to track the size of a growing list or even an interim set of summary data? Etc.,
etc.
Why do we summarise information? Ultimately it is to help us make some sort of decision.
For most people, summarisation involves summing and counting information.
Excel gives you some great tools to realise your summarisation needs. In the working world we illustrate
our summaries in two formats:
A. Visually (Charts, graphs, shapes, pictures, etc.)
B. Tabular (tables, pivots)
But you almost always will produce your summaries in a table format, and then that can produce a
visual part to your output.
Why not use a Pivot table?
Of course you can use a Pivot table, but hear me loud and clear. 95% of all Pivot tables are either
summing or counting information (with sorting built in). Once I discovered that, I personally stopped
using Pivot tables for the following reasons:
I.

II.
III.

They are annoying to format (not so much the colour scheme aspect, which is quite good, but
more the shape, size and location of the pivots. I prefer to have the smallest possible size of
information and put it where I want, knowing when I update I dont have to worry about how a
Pivot will self-adjust to the space Im working with).
Its not always obvious if there are issues with your source data, you may have to cleanse and
check with formulas anyway.
They can increase your file size (less of a big deal).

I do use pivots but only for quick and dirty analyses of information (more on that later), then for a more
permanent solution (i.e. ongoing report or dashboard) I set up swathes of counting and summing
formulas and format to my hearts content.
2. Finding Information

Needles in haystacks arent fun, unless you are Excel. Excel will help you find your needle in mounds of
haystacks and then it will tell you lots more juicy information about your needle!
Sure you can use Excels impressive filtering to help you (Auto Filter, Advanced Filter), but even then for
pinpoint accuracy and speed/efficiency you need to use formulas for your finding capabilities. Also
remember if youre summing information sometimes there might not be any pre-finding, just work with
source data if its in long boring lists (will get to this in the next section).
3. Treating information with rules
You can make your data conform to some rules to make it work better for you. The operative word
being IF. If the word in a cell is Green do something, if the date in another cell is prior to todays date

I cannot emphasise enough how

transformative this facility of Excel is for a Professional. Much more
then do something else, etc.

on this later.
4. Dealing with non-number information
Excel is fantastic at dealing with text information, which is absolutely essential for us professionals!

2. Stuff Ill mention when discussing the Formulas

Dragging/Copying Formulas
Its worth pointing this out for those of you not too familiar, but one of the fantastic things Excel does to
make our lives easier is to transfer formulas really easily. What do I mean? Take the example below,
where we are trying to work out the total cost for each category. Starting with Category A, type = (to
declare the formula) then the formula which is B2 multiplied by C2, press Enter and voila, we get the
result.

But what about the subsequent categories? Shall we write the formula again 5 more times? Thankfully
no. Phew! We can do one of two things:
1. Drag the formula down by clicking back into the cell, then clicking and holding the little square in
the bottom right and simply dragging it down as far as you want

(When you hover over the little square, the mouse cursor turns into a cross +)

2. Alternatively, you simply copy that formula (right click , select Copy or Ctrl + C), then highlight
all cells you want to place the formula and paste (right Click, select Paste or Ctrl + V)

Long Boring Lists

Long boring list is my affectionate term for the best way of organising and storing your information. It
will make your life much easier if you store information vertically, i.e. headings in row 1, then have the
most general category at the left and working to more specific as you go right as in the example below.

When you store information in this manner, it will make it so much easier to use formulas to get the
information you need from them (as well as other Excel functions, especially filtering).
Whatever you do please avoid organising and storing information in any other way. For example, I have
seen the following:

To the Excel untrained eye, the second example looks far more aesthetically pleasing than the previous
Long boring list, however I assure you, to use formulas on this data to analyse will end in tears for the
most part! The rule is Long boring lists to organise and store your information and then use formulas

(with ease) and formatting to create nice aesthetically pleasing summaries of your information for other
people. If at work you have inherited someone elses spreadsheet and it doesnt contain information in
a long boring list then the best investment you can make for your time is to convert the information into
a long boring list.
The biggest tip I will give to help turn your information into a long boring list is to not look for efficiency,
make the list inefficient. By that I mean do not fear repeating information. If you look at the two lists
above, the non-boring one has 3 mini tables for Retail, one per Sub-Unit. It only lists the sub unit once
and the word Retail 3 times. In contrast the long boring list lists the word Retail on 6 occasions, one per
line and essentially a line represents one person. So work out your main data point, in the example
above, its a person, then use the columns to list all the other information about the data point, then
repeat for the other data points.
Operators
Operators will help you to get the most out of the formulas. Data + Operators + Money formulas =
success! Feel free to skim this section quickly for now, but do come back to it after you have gone
through the formulas list and it will hold greater meaning.
This isnt an exhaustive list of Operators, but these are the most commonly used ones.
Operator
Symbol

Operator Name and

usage

Lesser known usage

Equals

Turn a formula into a logical check i.e. =VLOOKUP(A2,A:G,7,0)="Blue",

if the vlookup results in Blue then the final result will be a TRUE,
otherwise it will be a FALSE

Add, Subtract, Divide

Multiply

Use this to add more conditions to SUMPRODUCT (see SUMPRODUCT

section)

Referencing

See below on Referencing

Does not equal

To filter out certain values with SUMIF, SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT,

COUNTIF, etc. Eg SUMIF(B2:B7,"<>APAC", D2:D7) will sum values that
do not correspond to APAC

Greater than, Less

than, Greater than or
equal to, Less than or
equal to

Use to add numerical limitation to filtering out with SUMIF, SUMIFS,

SUMPRODUCT, COUNTIF etc. Eg SUMIF(B2:B7,">=3",C2:C7) will sum
values greater than or equal to 3

&

Concatenate

Join two or more values as text values whether they are text or not. i.e.
=(12*3) & " Months" results in '36 Months'

Denote Range or Time

=
+,-, /

<>

>,<,>=,
<=

A1:D10 (cells A1 to D10) or 07:00 (7 hours, 00 minutes)

Use to specify parts of a calculation and also for nesting multiple
formulas

()

Parenthesis

{}

Curly brackets

Used for declaring arrays of information .Not really discussing in this

book as its value is for advanced formulas

?, *

Wildcard for single (?)

pr multiple (*)
characters

Filter out certain values with SUMIF, SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT,

COUNTIF etc. Eg SUMIF(B2:B7,"Rob*",D2:D7) will sum values that do
not correspond to anyone called Rob, Robert, Robbie, Robin etc.

Dollar Dollar References yall!

Once you have moved past the obvious operators (+,-,* and /). The most important operator to
understand is $. Why? To acknowledge the all omnipotent power of the US economy? Err, not quite.
More to do with Absolute and Relative references.
The greatest value of the $ operator is when you need to drag/copy formulas across (vertically and/or
horizontally) and those formulas are referring to a single cell (i.e. A1) or a range of cells (i.e. A1:G20) that
need to be maintained (locked down). What do I mean?
Consider the following example where I want to look up the Office for a number of people, listed
horizontally in a vertically listed table of information. I write the following VLOOKUP in cell F3 to do so

I then drag this across (G3 & H3) expecting the correct result. See below I have an extra row, showing
the result and what the formula looks like after dragging (in Red text) .

We have ended up with 2 #N/A errors. This is because due to a lack of absolute references, the range
keeps shifting as we drag across (A: C becomes B: D after the first drag, then it becomes C: E after the

second drag) resulting in the incorrect range being queried. In this example we want it to be locked at A:
C and the way to lock down is to turn this into an Absolute reference by using the $ sign.
If we drag A across, it will become, B, C, D, E, etc.
But if we put a dollar sign and drag $A, it will always be A (or $A). Now we have locked the formulas
down, we get the correct result (no more #N/A errors)

Similarly if you want to drag downwards and lock the row number A$3 will ensure it remains A$3 all the
way. Using $ before both letter and number will result in no change no matter which direction you drag
(or even paste) it will always refer to cell A3.
Here is a table to explain the names of the references
Cell
A1
$A1
A$1
$A$1

Reference Type
Relative
Absolute Column, Relative Row
Relative Column, Absolute Row
Absolute

Although, dont worry about what they are called, terminology is not important. What matters is the
effect they have. The following table shows what happens when you put a $ before (Absolute
reference) or you dont put a $ before (Relative reference).

The best way to toggle between the reference types is to highlight or put the cursor at the cell(s)
reference and just keep pressing F4 till you have the desired reference type.
Processing Power

Occasionally I'll harp on about Processing Power. Since Excel has to do lots of calculations, in fact every
time you tell Excel to refresh (whenever you press enter in an active cell, every time you filter, open a

workbook etc.) you are putting 'strain' on Excel's memory, which borrows from your computer's
memory. So why am I telling you this? Isnt it a bit too off topic and defeating my purpose of saving you
time? Well, the more formulas you have throughout your spreadsheet, the more calculations will
happen and not all behind the scenes calculations are created equally, if you have tens of thousands of
formulas, your book will slow down, making your workflow frustratingly tedious and thus not saving you
time. So it's worth bearing in mind when Im talking about formulas with heavy processing needs that
perhaps explore options without spending too much time. As a rule, if you have a spreadsheet with
formulas working on thousands of rows (think SUMPRODUCT,SUMIF(S),INDEX,MATCH,VLOOKUP, etc.)
where you need columns of formulas, define your ranges i.e. A1:Z30000 rather than A:Z) and this will
really reduce processing strain.
Quick and dirty Analysis
Often in your Excel workflow you will want to 'check' some information. Someone emails you with a
random request for some information or you just need to work something out. So you do what I call a
'quick and dirty analysis' where you might just throw some data on a sheet and write some formulas (or
this is when I might use pivot tables) so you can give a response, then youre done with it and no one
need know that it was a messy bit of work!

3. Get to the formulas already

How I made my list
In homage to Microsofts approach to categorising Excel formulas, I will go through each of their
categories one by one and distinguish between the useful from the less useful. To start out with, I went
through all the formulas in Microsoft Excel 2010 (there are 335, but that number varies from version to
version and I am ignoring some obviously pointless ones like External Functions) and ranked each
formula from 1 to 10 on their usefulness. With that I created a Usefulness-ometer. Behold!

Now my finance connections tell me that Red is bad, mkay but in this book, Red is hot, the good kind of
hot!
What do I mean by useful?
In my decade of solving professional problems, working with other brilliant Excel people and teaching
people to apply Excel, I have found time and time again that the useful formulas for summarising,
counting, rule making and dealing with text are:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Quick to set up
Frequently called upon
Obvious in how they work (so you can troubleshoot and deal with errors)
Take up the least processing power (the weakest factor, but important when dealing with big
files)

Ultimately useful in this context is summed up by the fact that these Formulas will make your problem
solving super easy, and highly effective with minimal fuss. Heres how the numbers stack up on the
Usefulness-Omoter
0: Forget about it

1-2: Its a rare instance that you may have to use these, so rare that you are better off spending the time
learning to hum the theme tune to the opening credits of Frasier (clue, there is no theme tune)
3-4: Worth being aware of but chances are there are alternative ways to achieve what you want
5: There is some functional value to these that you will struggle to get from the more important
formulas, but they dont crop up that often. Keep them in your back pocket

6-7: Not formulas that youll rely on daily and dont have huge versatility, but serve specific purposes
and when you get into advanced territory, youll call on them a bit more so I recommend them.
8: Utterly brilliant and will make your professional life much easier (maybe even your personal life)
9: Clever, versatile and life altering. You will operate so much better as a professional with these bad ass
formulas and they will even clear your skin
10: Imagine these as being akin to one of your 5 senses, an extension to your very being. Excel Nirvana is
attained with mastery of these. Ive been told Neo used these to control the Matrix.

With that said, I will spend more time explaining formulas that rank 8-10 and will sporadically touch on
5-7s where I feel its worth touching on and there will be almost no mentions of 4 and below!

Its getting hot in here

To kick things off, here is the complete list of formulas by Excels categories in a heat map according to
the usefulness-ometer
Excel Formulas Heat Map
Date and time

Financial

Financial Continued

Math & Trig

Math & Trig

Continued

Statistical
Continued

Statistical

DATE

ACCRINT

XNPV

ABS

SUMIF

AVEDEV

NORMINV

DATEVALUE

ACCRINTM

YIELD

ACOS

SUMIFS

AVERAGE

NORMSDIST

DAY

AMORDEGRC

YIELDDISC

ACOSH

SUMPRODUCT

AVERAGEIFS

NORMSINV

DAYS360

AMORLINC

YIELDMAT

ASIN

SUMSQ

AVERAGEA

PEARSON

EDATE

COUPDAYBS

ASINH

SUMX2MY2

BETADIST

PERCENTILE

EOMONTH

COUPDAYS

DAVERAGE

ATAN

SUMX2PY2

BETAINV

PERCENTRANK

HOUR

COUPDAYSNC

DCOUNT

ATAN2

SUMXMY2

BINOMDIST

PERMUT

MINUTE

COUPNCD

DCOUNTA

ATANH

TAN

CHIDIST

POISSON

MONTH

COUPNUM

DGET

CEILING

TANH

CHIINV

PROB

NETWORKDAYS

COUPPCD

DMAX

COMBIN

TRUNC

CHITEST

QUARTILE

NOW

CUMIPMT

DMIN

COS

CONFIDENCE

RANK

SECOND

CUMPRINC

DPRODUCT

COSH

BESSELI

CORREL

RSQ

TIME

DB

DSTDEV

DEGREES

BESSELJ

COUNT

SKEW

TIMEVALUE

DDB

DSTDEVP

EVEN

BESSELK

COUNTA

SLOPE

TODAY

DISC

DSUM

EXP

BESSELY

COUNTBLANK

SMALL

WEEKDAY

DOLLARDE

DVAR

FACT

BIN2DEC

COUNTIF

STANDARDIZE

WEEKNUM

DOLLARFR

DVARP

FACTDOUBLE

BIN2HEX

COUNTIFS

STDEV

WORKDAY

DURATION

FLOOR

BIN2OCT

COVAR

STDEVA

YEAR

EFFECT

ASC

GCD

COMPLEX

CRITBINOM

STDEVP

YEARFRAC

FV

BAHTTEXT

INT

CONVERT

DEVSQ

STDEVPA

FVSCHEDULE

CHAR

LCM

DEC2BIN

EXPONDIST

STEYX

AND

INTRATE

CLEAN

LN

DEC2HEX

FDIST

TDIST

FALSE

IPMT

CODE

LOG

DEC2OCT

FINV

TINV

IF

IRR

CONCATENATE

LOG10

DELTA

FISHER

TREND

IFERROR

ISPMT

DOLLAR

MDETERM

ERF

FISHERINV

TRIMMEAN

NOT

MDURATION

EXACT

MINVERSE

ERFC

FORECAST

TTEST

OR

MIRR

FIND

MMULT

GESTEP

FREQUENCY

VAR

TRUE

NOMINAL

FIXED

MOD

HEX2BIN

FTEST

VARA

Lookup & Reference

NPER

JIS

MROUND

HEX2DEC

GAMMADIST

VARP

ADDRESS

NPV

LEFT

MULTINOMIAL

HEX2OCT

GAMMAINV

VARPA

AREAS

ODDFPRICE

LEN

ODD

IMABS

GAMMALN

WEIBULL

CHOOSE

ODDFYIELD

LOWER

PI

IMAGINARY

GEOMEAN

ZTEST

COLUMN

ODDLPRICE

MID

POWER

IMARGUMENT

GROWTH

COLUMNS

ODDLYIELD

PHONETIC

PRODUCT

IMCONJUGATE

HARMEAN

CELL

GETPIVOTDATA

PMT

PROPER

QUOTIENT

IMCOS

HYPGEOMDIST

ERROR.TYPE

HLOOKUP

PPMT

REPLACE

RADIANS

IMDIV

INTERCEPT

INFO

HYPERLINK

PRICE

REPT

RAND

IMEXP

KURT

ISBLANK

INDEX

PRICEDISC

RIGHT

RANDBETWEEN

IMLN

LARGE

ISERR

INDIRECT

PRICEMAT

SEARCH

ROMAN

IMLOG10

LINEST

ISERROR

LOOKUP

PV

SUBSTITUTE

ROUND

IMLOG2

LOGEST

ISEVEN

MATCH

RATE

ROUNDDOWN

IMPOWER

LOGINV

ISLOGICAL

OFFSET

RECEIVED

TEXT

ROUNDUP

IMPRODUCT

LOGNORMDIST

ISNA

ROW

SLN

TRIM

SERIESSUM

IMREAL

MAX

ISNONTEXT

ROWS

SYD

UPPER

SIGN

IMSIN

MAXA

ISNUMBER

RTD

TBILLEQ

VALUE

SIN

IMSQRT

MEDIAN

ISODD

TRANSPOSE

TBILLPRICE

SINH

IMSUB

MIN

ISREF

VLOOKUP

TBILLYIELD

SQRT

IMSUM

MINA

ISTEXT

VDB

SQRTPI

OCT2BIN

MODE

XIRR

SUBTOTAL

OCT2DEC

NEGBINOMDIST

NA

SUM

OCT2HEX

NORMDIST

TYPE

Logical

Database

Text

Engineering

Information

Okay, now lets delve deeper

Math & Trig

Math & Trig
Formula

Rating
(0 -10)

Formula

Rating
(0 -10)

Formula

Rating
(0 -10)

Formula

Rating
(0 -10)

ABS

FACT

ODD

SINH

ACOS

FACTDOUBLE

PI

SQRT

ACOSH

FLOOR

POWER

SQRTPI

ASIN

GCD

PRODUCT

SUBTOTAL

ASINH

INT

QUOTIENT

SUM

ATAN

LCM

RADIANS

SUMIF

ATAN2

LN

RAND

SUMIFS

ATANH

LOG

RANDBETWEEN

SUMPRODUCT

CEILING

LOG10

ROMAN

SUMSQ

COMBIN

MDETERM

ROUND

SUMX2MY2

COS

MINVERSE

ROUNDDOWN

SUMX2PY2

COSH

MMULT

ROUNDUP

SUMXMY2

DEGREES

MOD

SERIESSUM

TAN

EVEN

MROUND

SIGN

TANH

EXP

MULTINOMIAL

SIN

TRUNC

SUMIF and SUMIFS (9/10)

SUMIF and SUMIFs are essentially a way to total up data by adding some conditions to it, i.e. Filter then
sum the data. This makes them immensely valuable and are found prominently on Dashboard/Reports.
SUMIF can put one condition on totalling one column and SUMIFS allows you to add lots more
conditions. Im going to refer to SUMIF and SUMIFS as SUMIF(s) because while they differ slightly in
structure SUMIFS is simply an extension of SUMIF.
The structure of the SUMIF is:
SUMIF(Where shall I look for certain numbers/text, what specifically shall I look for, what
corresponding stuff shall I add up)
Or
SUMIF(Range, Criteria, Range to sum)
And the SUMIFS is:
SUMIFS (Range to sum, Range 1, Criteria of Range 1, Range 2, Criteria of Range 2)
Here are some examples (The data is not a screenshot so you can copy it into Excel and play around
with the examples)

Business

Sub-unit

Employee ID

Name

Start Date

Grade

Role

Savings
Produced

03/10/2012

Analyst

174,291

23,000

224,534

60,000

122,311

33,000

204,394

65,000

278,178

65,000

Analyst
Associate
Vice
President

163,583

33,000

270,746

52,500

122,575

33,000

221,802

57,600

Retail

Branch
Branding

Retail

Branch
Branding

Retail

Online

22510871010

Sam Sung

9171071104

Sony Bravia

13/12/2012

Vice
President

46692115

Terry Tibbs

27/08/2009

Analyst

I
Budget
limit
per
project

J
No. Of
Projects

4
5

Retail

Online

Kerry Merry

16/02/2010

Retail

Cashpoint
Testing

89912826

Retail

Cashpoint
Testing

Paul Robinson

22/07/2013

4102691015

Shah Rukh

16/07/2013

Wealth

Client Systems

48198751

Amitabh Bachan

18/11/2009

Wealth

Client Systems

38151261

Hansel Mansell

04/08/2012

Wealth

Client Systems

79722293

Gretal Petal

20/06/2010

Analyst
Associate
Vice
President

Wealth

Relationship
Management

15393338

William Thornton

21/02/2014

Analyst

144,653

44,000

Wealth

Relationship
Management

95462532

Glenda Bender

30/07/2013

Analyst

181,663

33,000

Wealth

Relationship
Management

Vice
President

264,726

60,000

Finance

Forecast Team

6421091710

124,274

46,750

Finance

Forecast Team

218,304

52,500

Finance

Forecast Team

Finance

Cost
Reduction

91434352

Louis CK

Finance

Cost
Reduction

42843262

Saima Ahmad

6
7

3101033134

Vice
President
Associate
Vice
President

8
9

10
11
12
13

24456437

Marion Jones

22/11/2011

Chris Rock

03/12/2013

102742277

Dave Chappelle

05/02/2012

Analyst
Associate
Vice
President

439103175

Bill Hicks

06/05/2012

Analyst

194,161

83,000

04/10/2013

Vice
President

215,079

65,000

25/04/2010

Director

370,746

83,000

14

15
16
17
18

What are the total saving's produced by Finance?

SUMIF(A2:A18,"Finance",H2:H18) = 1,122,564
What are the total savings produced by Retail Analysts?
SUMIFS(H2:H18,A2:A18,"Retail",G2:G18,"Analyst") =460,185

What are the total savings produced by Vice Presidents, whether Associate or not?
SUMIF(G2:G18,"*Vice*",H2:H18) = 1,897,763

SUMPRODUCT (8/10)
Sumproduct, it's used to calculate a bunch of numbers in one column by the corresponding bunch of
numbers in another column and then total them up. So it basically gives us Volume. Great. Next. Whoa
whoa, hold on there. Yes it does do that with numbers, but then some clever clogs, possibly while
intoxicated, decided to see what happens when you use Text with that. The results were awesome to
say the least. It upped Excel's summarising power dramatically. What we have now is essentially a
SUMIFs, but with far greater filtering capability. And whereas with SUMIF(S) we can total numbers from
only one column, here we can total multiple column in addition to setting conditions. Here are a few
examples on the dataset. Lets start some examples by replicating the SUMIF(S) problems from above
What are the total saving's produced by Finance?
SUMPRODUCT((A2:A18="Finance")*(H2:H18))= 1,122,564
What are the total savings produced by Retail Analysts?
SUMPRODUCT((A2:A18="Retail")*(G2:G18="Analyst")*(H2:H18))=460,185
What are the total savings produced by Vice Presidents, whether Associate or not?
Now Sumproducts dont like straightforward use of wildcards like SUMIF(S) (+1 for SUMIF(S)!) so we
need to get a bit creative here.
SUMPRODUCT((RIGHT(G2:G18,9)="President")*(H2:H18))=1,897,763
To briefly explain this, operate on the Role column (G). We easily apply the RIGHT formula here and
look for any entry in column G whose last 9 character end in President which is an alternative way to
meet our criteria.
The final example further demonstrates the powerful filtering capability of SUMPRODUCTS
Total Savings produced by Finance employees who started in 2013
SUMPRODUCT((A2:A18="Finance")*(YEAR(E2:E18)=2013)*(H2:H18)) = 339,353
So by wrapping the start date range (E2:E18) in the YEAR formula and looking for only 2013 entries,
what we have done is create a filter that says filter Business by Wealth and filter Start Date by 2013
which is equivalent to the image below:

Just bear in mind the picture above is a result of some image editing; its not possible to show two
filters as above!
There are a few rules for defining the ranges in SUMIF(S)/SUMPRODUCTS, follow these rules for
defining ranges in a sum product/SUMIF otherwise you will get N/A error:
1. The limits of the ranges in differing columns must always match (A2:A18, H2:H18 , not H3: H28) SUMIF(S)/SUMPRODUCT
2. Never define a limitless range (A:A, B:B) - SUMPRODUCT
3. Exclude the header row, as it will corrupt the numbers range SUMPRODUCT
Tip: For the majority of time use absolute references to lock down your ranges, only in certain
circumstances is it good to use relative references in defining your ranges (i.e. Dragging certain
formulas to make a big table or advanced formulas)

Now you may be asking if I deem SUMPRODUCT as more all singing all dancing then SUMIF(S) so then
why does it get an 8 and SUMIF(S) get a 9? Good question, it's because 90% of the time you only need a
basic SUMIF(S) set up to achieve your summarising needs, those with more time on their hands will
work out how to make SUMIF(S) do exactly that what SUMPRODUCTS can, but its a waste of time.

SUM (6/10)
There not much to add to the use of this formula that is taught on day 1 at elementary school. I'll offer
a tip which to use the keyboard shortcut Alt + = in the cell next to the range you wish to add
(horizontally or vertically).
SUBTOTAL (6/10)
Subtotal has two good uses. First, when using Autofilter you can use SUBTOTAL to give you the sum of
a column after filtering. So it becomes a 'physical' makeshift SUMIF(S) which is useful for when you're
doing a quick and dirty analysis for yourself. Second is when you are creating a totals column on some
report for example, if you use SUBTOTAL in place of SUM (everywhere), then when creating overall
totals SUBTOTAL will ignore all cells containing the subtotals as in the example below. (FYI The number
9 in the formula tells it to Add - see the Excel help for all other Total types like Average, Count, etc.).

ROUND/ROUNDDOWN/ROUNDUP
For when you only want to deal with part of a number. Note that if you're just rounding final numbers
(i.e. In summarising, for display) you can revert to the number format, in fact, select the cells you wish
to round and just use the rounding button on the 'Home' tab of the Excel Ribbon.

Date and Time

Date & Time
Formula

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Formula

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DATE

HOUR

SECOND

WORKDAY

DATEVALUE

MINUTE

TIME

YEAR

DAY

MONTH

TIMEVALUE

YEARFRAC

DAYS360

NETWORKDAYS

TODAY

YEARFRAC

EDATE

NETWORKDAYS

WEEKDAY

EOMONTH

NOW

WEEKNUM

Date and Time formulas just arent that big of a deal. Whilst Dates are frequently part of Spreadsheets
(Times, far less often), they are often dealt with by the equality/inequality operators (=, >, <, <>, =>, <=)
where they are used as part of some rule creation. Like if X occurred before 25 December 2014 then do
Y otherwise do Z (=IF(X<25/12/2014, Y, Z). Further to that last example its worth noting that the Date
formulas are not often used in isolation, but usually with other formulas
Occasionally you will want to extract the numbers that represent the Day, Month, Year in which case use
the DAY, MONTH, YEAR formulas to do so
NETWORKDAYS has uses if you're looking to work out the number of work days between two dates
factoring in holidays. WEEKDAY gives you the day of the week as a number and here's a combination
formula that will tell you the day today
=CHOOSE (WEEKDAY (TODAY (),
2),"Monday,""Tuesday,""Wednesday,""Thursday,""Friday,""Saturday,""Sunday")
One useful formula to note is simply TODAY (), this will give you todays date, so whenever you refresh, it
will update itself. Useful to use in combination formulas or for filtering purposes where you want to
compare a date to today's date.

Information
Information
Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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CELL

ISERROR

ISNUMBER

NA

ERROR.TYPE

ISEVEN

ISODD

TYPE

INFO

ISLOGICAL

ISREF

ISBLANK

ISNA

ISTEXT

ISERR

ISNONTEXT

ISERROR (7/10)
The most useful formula in this section is ISERROR, since it will tell you if another formula you have
results in an error. Why is that useful? This will help us to handle it, typically with rules. It is not
uncommon to use ISERROR with IF. But what about the IFERROR? That is a very simple and convenient
combination of IF and ISERROR, but as the rules we build become more sophisticated IFERROR doesn't
give us enough.
What about the other Error checking formulas (ISNA, ISERR, ISREF)? They all check for very particular
error types whereas ISERROR checks for all errors. They are useful for something called Error trapping
when you are embroiled in some deeper data analysis and for the most part you just don't need to do
that deep analysis.
A brief mention for ISBLANK (5/10) which tells us if a cell has no contents. The major use for this is in
rule building, so once again using our friend IF, we can ask something like IF(ISBLANK(A1),X,Y) or in
plain speak if the cell A1 is empty then do X otherwise do Y.

Statistical
Statistical
Formula

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AVEDEV

FDIST

MAX

SLOPE

AVERAGE

FINV

MAXA

SMALL

AVERAGEIFS

FISHER

MEDIAN

STANDARDIZE

AVERAGEA

FISHERINV

MIN

STDEV

BETADIST

FORECAST

MINA

STDEVA

BETAINV

FREQUENCY

MODE

STDEVP

BINOMDIST

FTEST

NEGBINOMDIST

STDEVPA

CHIDIST

GAMMADIST

NORMDIST

STEYX

CHIINV

GAMMAINV

NORMINV

TDIST

CHITEST

GAMMALN

NORMSDIST

TINV

CONFIDENCE

GEOMEAN

NORMSINV

TREND

CORREL

GROWTH

PEARSON

TRIMMEAN

COUNT

HARMEAN

PERCENTILE

TTEST

COUNTA

HYPGEOMDIST

PERCENTRANK

VAR

COUNTBLANK

INTERCEPT

PERMUT

VARA

COUNTIF

KURT

POISSON

VARP

COUNTIFS

LARGE

PROB

VARPA

COVAR

LINEST

QUARTILE

WEIBULL

CRITBINOM

LOGEST

RANK

ZTEST

DEVSQ

LOGINV

RSQ

EXPONDIST

LOGNORMDIST

SKEW

COUNTIF(S) (8/10)
COUNITF(S) complements SUMIF(S) and help paint a complete summarisation picture, they feature on
front pages of Dashboard/Reports, but I also use them extensively for quick and dirty analysis. For
example often a colleague shouts across the room, "Sohail, how many Analysts do we have?" Quick as a
flash, I'll open the data list I need to find that out, enter the following formula and respond with

COUNTIF (G2:G18,"Analyst") = 8
To which I'm met with a "And how many of those Analysts sit in wealth?"
"One second"...
COUNTIFS (A2:A18,"Wealth",G2:G18,"Analyst") = 3
"And, how many of those started since 2013?"...to which I reply "Come on, you know it's my porridge
time, it's gone all cold so kindly go and heat it up for me if you want more answers!"
And once that person comes back with my reheated porridge, I'll write this formula...
COUNTIFS (A2:A18,"Wealth",G2:G18,"Analyst",E2:E18,">31/12/2012") = 1
COUNITF(S) is a fantastic and formula, it gets an 8 rather than a 9, purely because on the balance of
work done by most professionals its less frequently used, but Im splitting hairs here by worrying
whether its an 8 or a 9. Befriend it!
MAX/MIN/LARGE/SMALL (6/10)
Technically they are finding formulas since they help you locate the biggest/smallest values in a list, but
you can use them to summarise (i.e. if your report has a section which is something like 'Highest
earning..." or "Earliest completion" (with dates), etc. They can also be good to use in conditional
formatting to highlight max min values in a list for visual inspection. What is the difference between
SMALL/LARGE and MIN/MAX, the former are more versatile in that you can pick the 2nd smallest or
10th largest etc. in a list whereas the latter are 1st largest/1st smallest. Bear in mind SMALL/LARGE use
far more processing power as they carry out an internal sort before ranking, we've already discussed
how processing power slows things down for lots of data, so use MIN/MAX where possible.

Text
Text
Formula

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ASC

EXACT

MID

SUBSTITUTE

BAHTTEXT

FIND

PHONETIC

CHAR

FIXED

PROPER

TEXT

CLEAN

JIS

REPLACE

TRIM

CODE

LEFT

REPT

UPPER

CONCATENATE

LEN

RIGHT

VALUE

DOLLAR

LOWER

SEARCH

One of Excels strengths is the great job it does of working with Text information. As a professional this is
truly an invaluable section since dealing with text data is fundamental to most professionals.

First lets look at formulas that cleanse text data. By cleansing, I mean making the piece of data
appropriate to work with.
TRIM (7/10)
Removes all unnecessary spaces in the text in a cell (apart from 1 space between words)
PROPER (6/10)
Makes the text in a cell lowercase apart from the first character and any character after a full stop
CLEAN (6/10)
Very useful when you bring data from another source (maybe you've pasted stuff from a website) and
Excel doesn't lie some of the characters properly, resulting in nonsense, such as below. Let CLEAN take
care of it for you!
A1 contains the following The correct values can be found at located at the areas in
So writing =CLEAN (A1) gives us The correct values can be found at located at the areas in
So we got rid of the weird symbols but it did leave us with extra spaces, so as a rule when bringing data
in, use the following combo:
=TRIM (CLEAN (A1)) which gives The correct values can be found at located at the areas in
If you look carefully, this has taken care of the extra spaces around where the symbols were.
SEARCH (8/10) /FIND (5/10)
These two look for a single character or a sequence of characters in a cell, the difference is FIND is case
sensitive and SEARCH is case insensitive and this is the main reason I, and so should you, always default
to SEARCH. What you will end up with is the position number of where your character is (or string of
characters start) so it acts a bit like the MATCH function, if there is no number you will get an error
(#VALUE!).
The structure of SEARCH/FIND is the same:
SEARCH (what character or sequential characters are you looking for?, what/where shall I look?, shall I
start looking from a certain number of characters in or if not Ill start from the beginning)
There are 3 common uses of FIND/SEARCH. First is in combination with the LEFT/RIGHT/MID which Ill
address in a bit. Second is to help rule building with IF again and lastly for quick and dirty analysis,
possibly with auto filtering where you create a new column and see if for example the word "email"
exists in some text, then where the formula produces a number rather than an error you can filter and
investigate.
LEN (8/10)

This is short for length and it simply gives you a count of characters in a cell including spaces. For
example LEN ("Hello") results in 5. LEN ("12/02/2014") results in 9 but LEN (12/02/2014) results in 5
because while Excel perceives "12/02/2014" as text, 12/02/2014 is a date, so behind the scenes Excel
converts it to a serial number (41682) which has a length of 5.
LEFT, MID, RIGHT
These very useful formulas will extract characters from a cell.
LEFT (8/10)
Always starts extracting from left to right. Heres the structure:
LEFT (what/where is your text, how many characters shall I display starting from the left)
Lets say we want to know the first 5 characters of a unique reference number as it implies some useful
information, heres how we do it:

MID (8/10)
This is like LEFT in that it extract looking left to right, but the difference is you can decide how many
character in you want to start. Heres the structure:
MID (what/where is your text, how many characters in, how many characters shall I display starting
from the left),
To keep the example simple, let's say we have some Unique References where the letters always give us
region abbreviation and we know they occur 3 characters in.

RIGHT (8/10)
Always starts extracting from right to left. Heres the structure:

RIGHT (what/where is your text, how many characters shall I display from the right).
This example wants to do a very simple check to see if the word President is contained in column A so
we set a basic RIGHT formula to look at the last 9 characters and by making the whole thing equal to the
word President we are creating a check. If they contain the characters President it will result in a
TRUE, otherwise if not then we will get a FALSE output.

That covers the basics but before moving on I just want to give a simple example how we can
manipulate text data to make it fit for our purpose. A classic example, something I encounter in most
weeks at work is around extracting certain words. For example, we want the first name of a person
where names in a cell are in a First Name space Second Name format. So how can we extract just the
first name? What do all the names have in common? They all have a space between the first and second
names. So all we do is to use a formula to search for which number the space occurs:

Now if we put that number into a LEFT formula and say count up to this many characters (-1 since we
dont want to include the space) then we have a way to automatically extract just the first name!
Behold.

This is just a basic, but powerful example of some of the cool stuff Excel can do to handle text data.
Before ending this section, I may be lambasted by some for not rating the CONCATENATE function
highly, whilst it does something very useful which is to join the contents of two or more
cells/text/values, it has zero advantages over the ampersand operator (&) so don't bother with it.

Lookup & Reference

Lookup & Reference
Formula

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Formula

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ADDRESS

GETPIVOTDATA

LOOKUP

RTD

AREAS

HLOOKUP

MATCH

TRANSPOSE

CHOOSE

HYPERLINK

OFFSET

VLOOKUP

10

COLUMN

INDEX

ROW

COLUMNS

INDIRECT

ROWS

VLOOKUP (10/10)
Fanfare, trumpets.the VLOOKUP is a 10 out of 10! And lets take a look why
The VLOOKUP allows us to find information about some piece of data after its been identified in a list.
Its like hiring a private detective, the ultimate private detective.

Lets say you want to know more about a person, you would tell the private detective (the VLOOKUP
formula) the name of that person (lookup value), then the detective goes and finds the person (in a list
or range) and finds out all kinds of related information that is available.
Ultimately, a VLOOKUP helps us to find information in a list. Given that Im a visual person, let me
explain how we might use VLOOKUP to find things from a list and why with the following picture

If I wanted to know what colour hat #3 is wearing, I can see quite easily its orange or I know that #4
does not have a phone. Easy enough with 5 (somewhat creepy looking) stick men, but what if we had to
deal with say 10,345 stick men? Since most of us dont have a crazy photographic memory the visual
inspection task becomes absurdly difficult. Lets summarise this in a list

We can instruct a VLOOKUP to look for #9 and tell us its hat colour. So lets look VLOOKUPs structure:
VLOOKUP (What are you looking for?, Where shall I find it?, How many columns across shall I look for
the related information, shall I look for the exact item or if your data is sorted something that resembles
it?)
In this case our lookup value is simply 9, we are looking in the range A1:D10346 (we want the range to
cover all the columns we might want to look in), we want to go 2 columns in and we want the exact
match so we put 0 (or VLOOKUP gives you the option of choosing FALSE, which means the same as 0 in
this part of the formula)
Putting those in the formula we get VLOOKUP (9, A1:D10346, 2, 0) = Pink
Now that I have introduced the VLOOKUP, lets park it for a while. Im going to come back to VLOOKUP
several times more in the book, but I want to do it as I introduce more formulas so you can truly grasp
its value and why it gets a 10 out of 10.
Before I go on, I want to briefly mention the HLOOKUP, it is the VLOOKUPS evil horizontal cousin, why
does it get such a low rating? In my decade plus of using Excel at work I used it sparsely in the first year
then abandoned it once I realised that you should always endeavour to store data vertically, not
horizontally. So part of me giving HLOOKUP such a comparatively low rating is to further discourage you
lovely professionals to store data any way but vertically.
MATCH (9/10)
Whilst the detective we previously talked about found information related to a piece of data, another
formula simply lets us find where the data is by looking for a match, think of this as police putting an

APB (weve all seen 80s US cop shows right ?). They just want to find a match and identify the location
of a suspect.

So stepping away from crime analogies, MATCH will find a value in a list and tell you where it sits in that
list. The list can be vertical (i.e. long boring list) or horizontal, take a look at its structure:
MATCH (What are you looking for?, Where shall I look for it, shall I look for the exact item or if your data
is sorted something that resembles it?)
Now just a quick note to address second part of that formula: Where shall I look for it?
If you write a range like A1:A10, then the MATCH knows it has to look vertically and its result will be a
number between 1 and 10 (if a matching item is found). If you write a range like A1:J1 then MATCH
knows it has to look horizontally and again it will produce a number between 1 (A) and 10 (J) if a
matching item is found.
As much as I recommend working with data vertically, with MATCH you often want to exploit its ability
to work horizontally.
INDEX (9/10)
This uses position numbers to pinpoint data in a grid like crosshairs.

There are a couple of structures for INDEX, but Im showing you the most common one:
INDEX (tell me a range to look into, which row number in that range shall I look?, which column
number in that range shall I look?)
Since, the inputs to index are essentially co-ordinates, the output will be the contents of the cell
corresponding to the co-ordinates. Match is the perfect formula to supply index with coordinates, hence I like to think of MATCH and INDEX as best friends!

Lets get our heads round this a bit more. Take this grid which represents a support staff rota, we want
to see which staff member is going to cover Finance on Thursday. From a visual inspection we can see
where Bill Hicks will be.

So how do we set up INDEX to do this? And MATCH to do this for us? We know that in the grid which
has a range of B2:H6, Thursday is 4th along horizontally and Finance is 3rd along vertically, so we simply
plug all that into our Index formula:
INDEX (B2:H6, 3, 4) = Bill Hicks
But what happens when we don't want to visually work out how many rows and columns we need to
look? This is a very common scenario where there are too many rows and columns were dealing with.
That's when MATCH comes back into the picture, we simply replace the rows and column numbers with
the MATCH formulas we previously created as follows:
Lets first find the position of Thursday in row 1
MATCH ("Thursday", B1:H1, 0) = 4
Note the B1:H1 range is a horizontal one, so MATCH knows it needs to count 1(Column B), 2(Column C),
3(Column D)7(Column H). Though since it is looking for Thursday, it gets as far as 5 (E). Similarly, to
find the position of Finance:
MATCH ("Finance", A2:A6, 0) = 3
Again the A2:A6 tells MATCH to work vertically, starting at row 2 and count down 1(Row 2), 2(Row
3)..5(Row 6). It gets to 3 (Row 4) as it meets its objective and finds Thursday.
So we have coordinates, how do we get INDEX to give us the answer? Lets just remind ourselves of the
last INDEX formula we created
INDEX (B2:H6, 3, 4) = Bill Hicks
We simply substitute our MATCH formulas straight into the INDEX for one formula:
INDEX (B2:H6, MATCH ("Finance", A2:A6, 0), MATCH ("Thursday", B1:H1, 0)) = Bill Hicks
This example uses two MATCHES in one formula, but in most professional situations, youll probably just
need the one, since you may know that youre dealing with column 4 for example, so you might just
write:
INDEX (B2:H6, MATCH ("Finance", A2:A6, 0), 4) = Bill Hicks

Voila! Now we have a very powerful ability to do a lookup based on row and column content. Its worth
going through an example of how this lethal combo of MATCH and INDEX might prove useful over a
VLOOKUP.
Let's say every month the Finance team send us over some forecasts that we want to capture, so we
want to look up the values, here is the grid from one particular month (feel free to copy it and play
around):
A
1
2
3
4
5
6

B
Jan
118,000
120,000
106,000
135,000
125,000

Wealth
Retail
Finance
IT
HR

C
Feb
137,000
120,000
145,000
128,000
146,000

D
Mar
149,000
112,000
106,000
106,000
131,000

E
Apr
112,000
124,000
149,000
114,000
148,000

F
May
109,000
142,000
136,000
140,000
122,000

G
Jun
114,000
136,000
131,000
111,000
100,000

So we pre-set some VLOOKUPS in our spreadsheet and every month we paste the data somewhere that
we refer to in our VLOOKUP range. For it to work every month without thinking about it, we need for
the columns to always be in the same place. Heres an example (shortened to fit the page).

This is where the formula becomes dependent on the range ($A$1:$G$6) and the column numbers (2, 3,
4, 5) (Also please note how I have returned to using absolute references to ensure the range doesnt
shift).
Now, what if the next month Finance decides to send us this:
A
1

B
Jan

Feb

Mar

Q1 Totals

Apr

May

Jun

Q2 Totals

Wealth

118,000

137,000

149,000

404,000

112,000

109,000

114,000

335,000

Retail

120,000

120,000

112,000

352,000

124,000

142,000

136,000

402,000

Finance

106,000

145,000

106,000

357,000

149,000

136,000

131,000

416,000

IT

135,000

128,000

106,000

369,000

114,000

140,000

111,000

365,000

HR

125,000

146,000

131,000

402,000

148,000

122,000

100,000

370,000

And then the month after we get this:

A

Jan

Feb

Mar

Q1 Totals

Apr

2
3

Wealth
Retail

118,000
120,000

137,000
120,000

149,000
112,000

404,000
352,000

112,000
124,000

4
5
6

Finance
IT
HR

106,000
135,000
125,000

145,000
128,000
146,000

106,000
106,000
131,000

357,000
369,000
402,000

149,000
114,000
148,000

Notes on April
Above average
spend
Investigate
Have they
started?

May

Jun

Q2 Totals

109,000
142,000

114,000
136,000

335,000
402,000

136,000
140,000
122,000

131,000
111,000
100,000

416,000
365,000
370,000

This does not bode well for that lovely VLOOKUP we set up earlier which was going to save us time since
the range and column positions have all changed

Now our results are all messed up, the Jun one doesnt even make any sense! Of course, it just means
that we have to adjust our VLOOKUPS. It won't take a very long time in this case, but what if there are
many more columns and greater changes in the actual column positions, which is a very real work
scenario?
MATCH combined with INDEX will remedy this, so we tell MATCH to find the correct column to look for
and plug it into INDEX (along with the correct row).

Column: MATCH ("Jan", $B$1:$J$1, 0) = 1

Row: MATCH (Wealth, $A$2:$A$6, 0) = 1
No we combine them with the INDEX formula and we see that it gives us the correct result. So if we set
up a small table to populate where the months run in row 1 and department names in column A, instead
of stating Jun and Wealth we use relative references:

Column: MATCH ($A10, $B$1:$J$1, 0) - where $A10 contains the department names
Row: MATCH (B$9, $A$2:$A$6, 0) where B$9 contains the months
We can write the following INDEX formula:
INDEX ($B$2:$J$6, MATCH ($A10, $A$2:$A$6, 0), MATCH (B$9, $B$1:$J$1, 0))

Dragging this across (which we can do by using relative references for the MATCH inputs and absolute
references for INDEX range) we get the correct result
Of course a limitation is other people changing the actual column names remaining, but one can get
creative with the text formulas and IF to build some rules, though some I've normally solved this by
asking teams not make such drastic changes!)
Another big victory INDEX/MATCH has over VLOOKUP is that you can find information to the left of the
values you are searching for. (However, in a quick and dirty analysis feel free to just temporarily adjust
your column positions and do a VLOOKUP where needed)
In conclusion between VLOOKUP, MATCH and INDEX you will become masterful at finding the
information you need.
CHOOSE (8/10)
Choose allows us to pick an item from a list of individual options. The first part of the CHOOSE formula is
the entry in the list you will define followed by the list which can be 255 entries long. The list can be
prewritten into the formula, for example:
CHOOSE (3,"Red", Green", "Yellow", "Blue") gives us Yellow
The list can refer to various cells, in any order we like, for example

CHOOSE (4, A2, B2, A1, B1) = Yellow

Or the list can refer to ranges: CHOOSE(1,B1:B10,C1:C10) which allows us to get creative and combine
CHOOSE with another formula that relies on ranges (think VLOOKUP,MATCH,INDEX,SUMIF etc.) to allow
us to operate/look up on one range or another.
CHOOSE goes into decision/ rule building territory and we can use CHOOSE to select a particular formula
as the output: CHOOSE (B3, Formula1, Formula2, Formula3, Formula4)
For example depending on what C1 (and C2, C3) contains, we will sum different parts of a list:

So one of three formulas are being chosen by the index numbers and they all up different parts of the
list in A1:A10
CHOOSE somewhat bridges the gap between finding and rule building, it is definitely a worthy weapon
in the arsenal, but I have rated it a bit lower than some of the other useful formulas since its frequency
of usage is less that the others.
COLUMN (5/10)
COLUMN is very simple to use and it has very high value when using VLOOKUPs. All the formula does is
to tell you the number of the column it is in, you dont even put anything in the brackets! Madness!

If you have a load of VLOOKUPs which span a large horizontal range, you need to manually adjust the 3rd
part of the formula, the column number to look in, so we can either manually adjust each time we drag
or we can set up some kind of moving column index number. Using COLUMN () is one excellent way to
set up a column number that automatically moves: lets have a look...
Let's say you need to drag the following formula horizontally from cell B2 to ZZ2000 too lookup some
info, well the span is 51 columns, so we could manually enter the column index number each time i.e.
2,3,4,5 etc. or providing the table of VLOOKUPS we are creating structurally matches the data we are
looking up from (i.e. your data is in columns A:Z and your VLOOKUPS are also in columns A:Z but lower
down perhaps or even on another worksheet but still in A:Z) then we can replace the column number
with the formula COLUMN():
I.e. we have the formula VLOOKUP ($A1, $A$1:$ZZ$2000, 2, 0) and we want to drag/copy it from column
B to ZZ, we simply replace the column number with
However entering COLUMN () in place of the column index number will result in the column auto adjust
as you drag, saving lots of time!
VLOOKUP($A$1,$A$1:$ZZ$2000,COLUMN(),0), VLOOKUP($A$1,$A$1:$ZZ$2000,COLUMN(),0)etc.
What looks like the same formula actually produces different results due to COLUMN () giving a different
result in every column.
ROW (5/10)

This works the exact same way as column, telling you what row you are in, but whilst COLUMN () works
wonders when dealing with lots of VLOOKUPS, ROW has benefits with more advanced formula building.
Its probably a bit out of scope for this book, but if you follow my work around the Internet I do discuss
its usage in constructing more advanced formulas.

INDIRECT (5/10)
This is used to refer to the contents of another cell. i.e. if you write "B1" in the cell A1, then in C1 you
type the formula INDIRECT(A1), then the result will be whatever the contents of cell B1 are, what?! I
barely followed that so let me give you a visual where C2 contains the formula and C1 contains the
result.

This is one of those formulas which is more of a function rather than a clever formula. Its used mostly in
making some pretty advanced formulas (not frequently used) or it is used to create multiple Data
Validation lists (both which are out of the scope of this book, but again look around the Web for me
talking about those topics).

Logical
Logical
Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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AND

IF

10

NOT

FALSE

IFERROR

OR

Formula
TRUE

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(0 -10)
0

IF (10/10)
To make something obey us by treating it with rules allows us to explicitly make a decision which makes
IF infinitely useful to us. IF can allow us to make a simple rule or build very complex logic (akin to
programming), which is why IF gets a coveted 10 out of 10 on the usefulness-ometer! What do I mean
by treating with rules?
In Excel we want information to conform in a certain way for example, in column A we have test scores,
then in column B we can make a rule that says if the test score is above 50% then its a pass and below
50% its a fail.

IF has a simple construct IF (if this is true, do this, otherwise do this). So for the example above we can
write:
IF (A1>50,Pass,Fail)
And simply drag this down:

Without getting into the philosophy of logic, IF lets us to treat data with rules, we can then use multiple
ifs to build more sophisticated rules, such as the next example.
Lets say we want to create a list of what awards should be given to runners completing a marathon. If a
runner finishes a marathon in less than 3 hours then they are awarded a gold standard, if it's between 3
and 4 hours they get a silver standard and for more than 4 hours they get a bronze standard. I highly
recommend drawing a Tree diagram to help us visualise the logic, making it easier to then turn the
whole thing in to a formula

The best way to build logic with IF formulas is to eliminate outcomes, so in each branch of the tree
diagram, the state is either a particular outcome (took less than 3 hours) or not that outcome (did not
take less than 3 hours).
We have 3 outcomes we want to explore, but an IF can only produce 2 outcomes, so how can we deal
with this?
We Nest two IF statements.
Nesting IF statements (or other formulas but mostly IFs) means you build up formulas within formulas.
Why? In the case of IF where you can only have 2 outcomes, we replace one of those outcomes with an
entire IF statement. So we have one outcome from the first IF and two outcomes from the second IF,
giving us three outcomes! The following diagram shows this:

Outcome if YES

Outcome if Question 2 Yes

IF(Does runner takes less than 3 hrs?, GOLD, IF (Does runner takes less than 4hrs?,SILVER,BRONZE))
Question 1

If Question 1 outcome NO ask Question 2

Outcome if Question 2 No

Inner nest (IF number 2)

Outer nest (IF number 1)
And now its pretty easy to write the formula, assuming the runners time is in cell A1
IF (A1<=3,"Gold", IF (A1<=4,"Silver","Bronze"))
Assuming the time in cell A1 is 3.1, the result is Silver
Then we draw upon Excels brilliance by dragging this formula all the way down (assuming there are
more number in column A) and voila, we instantly have our list of awards.
Nesting IFs is about setting up a series of outcomes so that when you put something in (i.e. some data
into the original question) the series of IFs will route the data by process of elimination to the correct
outcome.
Nesting IF statements is really what gives it a 10 out of 10 (otherwise it would be a mere 9!). Each
nesting level gives one more outcome than the number of IF statements i.e. 5 Ifs will give you 6
potential outcomes. Excel allows for a maximum of 7 IF statement nesting, which allows you to build
some very complex rules, more than this is very rare and youre not being creative enough!
TIP
When nesting Formulas, pay close attention to the colour of the brackets, this is a brilliant little function
Excel gives you to help you keep match brackets and therefore keeps track of them.
IF (A1>=4,"Bronze", IF (A1>=3,"Silver","Gold")) You can see the green is encasing the second (inner)
nested IF and the black brackets are encasing the first (outer) nested IF. Black brackets always encase
the outermost, main formula.

Here are some more example of IF that should spark ideas in how to use them
IF (WEEKDAY (TODAY ())>5,"Weekend","Weekday")
Weekday gives you a number (from 1 to 7) of a day, we put today in there. If today happens to be a
Friday, the weekday is 5 and it will result in a false, so this produces a result of Weekday.
VLOOKUP (F3, IF (F2="Quarter 1", A1:B4, C1:D4), 2, 0)
This formula is interesting in that the IF statement gives us a range of cells as an outcome, either A1:A4
or C1:D4. By itself it would produce a #VALUE! Error, because if you put =A1:B4 in a cell, Excel gets

confused. However, a range fits nicely in say, a VLOOKUP, where you need to specify a range. Study the
example in the screen shot to see how it works:

Please not I am just illustrating a quick example above, but to take a quick tangent, the data is listed
horribly! (See long boring lists)
Okay, we previously talked about ISERROR, and how we use it, heres an example:

We are merely looking up from the table in A2:B7. The results go in columns E based on the
corresponding months is column D. We have one error, which comes from the fact that December
doesnt exist on our source data for the VLOOKUP. How can we deal with this messiness, which is an
issue when the list is very long? Easy? We wrap the VLOOKUP first in ISERROR, which gives us either a
TRUE or FALSE outcome.

Now we take that and place it into an IF statement, we are saying that if the VLOOKUP results in an
error, the ISERROR will produce a TRUE and trigger the true outcome which is a (produce an empty
looking cell), if its a FALSE, it will trigger the false outcome, which is simply the original VLOOKUP and so
we get the answer. As you can see it is cleaner.

This is probably a good time to temporarily weave to the next formula

IFERROR (8/10)

What we just did in the very last example, can be achieved with even less work with a relatively new
formula from the Excel team called IFERROR, which simply states:
IFERROR (Put formula here & if its not an error youll get result, if its an error tell me what result to put)
So taking the previous example, rather than using IF, ISERROR, we are simply using IFERROR, simple!

This is a very typical usage of IFERROR, so should we ever bother with the IF and ISERROR combination?
Yes, we most definitely should. Heres when: When you want to check if a formula gives an error and
then state something about that:

So were not actually concerned with the result of the VLOOKUP itself but we want to register the
existence of an input. Heres another example.
Suppose we have a long list of role titles (or 4 in the example!) and next to each one we want to state
whether it is some kind of Vice President (VP) role. So we can use SEARCH and see if the words Vice
President crop up.

In two cases they dont, so we can use our IF and ISERROR combo to give a clean result

Financial, Engineering and Database

Financial
Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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ACCRINT

DISC

NPER

SLN

ACCRINTM

DOLLARDE

NPV

SYD

AMORDEGRC

DOLLARFR

ODDFPRICE

TBILLEQ

AMORLINC

DURATION

ODDFYIELD

TBILLPRICE

COUPDAYBS

EFFECT

ODDLPRICE

TBILLYIELD

COUPDAYS

FV

ODDLYIELD

VDB

COUPDAYSNC

FVSCHEDULE

PMT

XIRR

COUPNCD

INTRATE

PPMT

XNPV

COUPNUM

IPMT

PRICE

YIELD

COUPPCD

IRR

PRICEDISC

YIELDDISC

CUMIPMT

ISPMT

PRICEMAT

YIELDMAT

CUMPRINC

MDURATION

PV

DB

MIRR

RATE

DDB

NOMINAL

RECEIVED

Engineering
Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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BESSELI

DEC2HEX

IMAGINARY

IMPRODUCT

BESSELJ

DEC2OCT

IMARGUMENT

IMREAL

BESSELK

DELTA

IMCONJUGATE

IMSIN

BESSELY

ERF

IMCOS

IMSQRT

BIN2DEC

ERFC

IMDIV

IMSUB

BIN2HEX

GESTEP

IMEXP

IMSUM

BIN2OCT

HEX2BIN

IMLN

OCT2BIN

COMPLEX

HEX2DEC

IMLOG10

OCT2DEC

CONVERT

HEX2OCT

IMLOG2

OCT2HEX

DEC2BIN

IMABS

IMPOWER

Database
Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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Formula

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DAVERAGE

DGET

DPRODUCT

DSUM

DCOUNT

DMAX

DSTDEV

DVAR

DCOUNTA

DMIN

DSTDEVP

DVARP

I have placed these together since the rating on each of the formulas in these categories is a big fat zero!
The Engineering formulas are used for niche engineering modelling, which might prove useful for a
research engineer/scientist, but not a professional.

Believe it or not, having worked in financial services for many years, I have never met a person who has
needed the financial formulas, not even an actual finance colleague! They are used for niche financial/
economic modelling, but are of no use to professionals. All the modelling work invariably ends up
getting done using fairly standard formulas to translate your ideas.
Finally, the Database functions can have their use, but it requires a specific set up of data and you can
achieve the same outcome with other frequently used tools in Excel like filtering and sum/count
formulas, so they are surplus to requirements. Avoid.

4. Money Formulas and where to go

So having looked at 335 Excel formulas, most briefly, here is the list of the Money Formulas. The 27 most
important formulas for professionals to flourish in their careers:
Money Formula
IF
VLOOKUP
INDEX
MATCH
SUMIF(S)
IFERROR
CHOOSE
SUMPRODUCT
COUNTIF(S)
LEFT
LEN
MID
RIGHT
SEARCH
ISERROR
TRIM
SUBTOTAL
SUM
COUNTA
LARGE
MAX
MIN
SMALL
CLEAN
PROPER

Description by Microsoft
Specifies a logical test to perform
Looks in the first column of an array and moves across the row to
return the value of a cell
Uses an index to choose a value from a reference or array
Looks up values in a reference or array
Adds the cells specified by a given criteria
Returns a specified value if error otherwise returns value of formula
that has been input
Chooses a value from a list of values
Returns the sum of the products of corresponding array components
Counts the number of nonblank cells within a range that meet the
given criteria
Returns the leftmost characters from a text value
Returns the number of characters in a text string
Returns a specific number of characters from a text string starting at
the position you specify
Returns the rightmost characters from a text value
Finds one text value within another (not case-sensitive)
Returns TRUE if the value is any error value
Removes spaces from text
Returns a subtotal in a list or database
Adds its arguments
Counts how many values are in the list of arguments
Returns the k-th largest value in a data set
Returns the maximum value in a list of arguments
Returns the minimum value in a list of arguments
Returns the k-th smallest value in a data set
Removes all nonprintable characters from text
Capitalizes the first letter in each word of a text value

Ranking
10
10
9
9
9
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
7
7
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6
6

What about the new versions of Excel 2013, 2016 etc?

Yes, the newer versions of Excel have some tremendous formulas and features etc but there is a big
BUT. These versions wont be widely available in most organisations for many years to come and even
when they do, the newer functionality will take more years to be widely used amongst the majority of
users in organisations. But most importantly, you will still use the most highly ranked formulas (i.e.
those I have ranked 8 to 10 above). They are basic and fundamental. The IF statement is the most
fundamental building block of logic in ALL programming, its not going anywhere. The VLOOKUP or

INDEX/MATCH combo are just the most basic and wonderful way of pulling info from a list. They are not
going anywhere. So dont sweat the new versions. Yes they are nice but for practical reasons that other
colleagues and organisations will get confused by the new functionality, I dont bother with them.
In closing
Money Formulas are like those people who turn up to your social occasions. They are like Google. They
are like flu vaccines before getting on public transport. They are like quiet to a monk. They are like
caffeine to me as I write this book. They are your friends.
Having read this book, I hope you understand that it is an exercise in seed planting. Excel is an amazing
tool that is as significant as you want it to be in your career, the more significant the more your potential
for earning can be. With some direction from someone like myself who has spent his 10,000 hours
applying Excel in the workplace, I can distil its significance to in a fraction of the 10,000 hours I put in.
Consider the list of Money formulas as something of a roadmap to learn the most important formulas.
Honestly, pretty much all problems that you encounter can be addressed with just these few formulas.
So rather than give you a set curriculum (which whilst incredibly valuable, is a bit much for this book, but
please subscribe to learn more) please just have a go, pick one or more formulas at every opportunity

And most
importantly my fellow professionals, do not forget that these
27 Formulas which represent less than 10% of all of Excels
formulas will solve more than 90% of your problems, so please resist
and find an excuse to use them in a spreadsheet you are working on.

the urge to bother with any other formulas.

Sohail Anwar