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17 Excel Functions to use in 2017.


17 Excel Functions for 2017

          Versatility of Excel’s built-in functions is undeniably one of the main reasons behind this program’s popularity. As users, we have the flexibility to compose complex formulas incorporating multiple functions in our solution to achieve substantial gains in productivity. Most people have their own go-to Excel functions, be it: financial, date & time, math & trigonometry, statistics, look up & reference, database, text (manipulation), or logical. We’ve covered some of these functions already, but below is a compilation of 17 relatively under-used Excel functions you might want to add to your professional repertoire in the new year. Fair warning, you might need to have Office 365 version of Excel for all of the functions to work.

          1. PMT
          2. DATEDIF
          3. LARGE
          4. REPT
          5. LEN
          6. TRIM
          7. SUBSTITUTE
          8. TEXT
          9. IFS
          10. CONVERT
          11. NETWORKDAYS
          12. HLOOKUP
          13. INDIRECT
          14. OFFSET
          15. TRANSPOSE
          16. DSUM
          17. RAND
          BONUS: SUMPRODUCT

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TIME conversions in Microsoft Excel.


Performing TIME calculations in Microsoft Excel

          We’ve covered a lot of ground with posts on date calculations in Excel: using the DATEDIF function, calculations without the DATEDIF function , and in the most recent post – business day calculations with the NETWORKDAYS funtion. Now it’s turn to perform some TIME conversions and calculations in Excel. We will use TIME, TIMEVALUE, NOW, HOUR, MINUTE, SECOND, TEXT, and MOD functions to perform various time operations…

          NOW function displays the current date and time. Depending on your cell formatting, it might be date only, or if your cell format is General, it could even be serial number equivalent of your current date and time. While this function has no arguments, its syntax still calls for a set of parenthesis: =NOW(). We already know that Excel uses the whole value of 1, in reference to the “beginning of time”, as far as Microsoft is concerned – January 1, 1900. Similarly, today’s date has the value of 42,124 The decimal point value references the fractional time portion of any date. As an example, 0.5 denotes NOON, while 0.75 refers to 6 PM. [0.75*24 = 18] Similarly, one minute, is 1/60th of an hour or 1/1440th of a day, calculating to be 0.069(4). Keep in mind that, whenever date/time value starts with a 0, the date portion has no value, and we are working with the time value only.

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Calculate your age, WITHOUT using Excel’s DateDif function.


Calculate Your Age in Excel, without DATEDIF function

          My previous post on using Excel’s DATEDIF function resulted in rather productive discussions on LinkedIn. First of all, some users are concerned that the DATEDIF function will no longer be supported in Excel and will cease to exist at some point in the future. Microsoft openly states that “this function is provided for compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3.” , and given the history of this support, I don’t see why it will be discontinued. Nonetheless, I will make an attempt to replace DATEDIF function with other functions readily available in the program. Secondly, as a reminder that English is not the only language in the world, Microsoft created “local” versions of this function. A user confirmed existence of the SIFECHA function, but the syntax to use it, involves using semicolons, instead of commas. If you are using Spanish version of Excel, you might want to try both versions:

SIFECHA(fecha_inicial,fecha_final,unidad)
SIFECHA(fecha_inicial;fecha_final;unidad)

          According to this site , remaining versions of this function include:
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Calculate your age, using Excel’s DateDif function.


Excel's DateDif function - Calculate Your Age

          During this time of the year, most of us find ourselves performing some sorts of date manipulations in Excel: running year-end reports, creating a project plan for the next year, or simply setting up a new calendar. Let’s use one of Excel’s “hidden” functions to calculate one’s age in years, months, and days.

          We remember that Excel stores dates as serial numbers, in consecutive order. According to Microsoft, Day 1 fell on January 1st, 1900. Therefore, today’s date is equivalent to number 42,020 (meaning, 42,020 days passed since January 1st, 1900.) This makes it fairly easily to calculate difference between two dates [in days] by subtracting one date from another. While Excel does not support dates prior to January 1st, 1900 out of the box, if you need to work with such dates, John Walkenbach offers an Excel add in: XDate to help with this task.
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