List of functions and what they do.

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Patt

I have been asked to do some training for Excel. Is there
somewhere I can find a list of functions and what they do,
where to use them, etc?
TIA
 
I have been asked to do some training for Excel. Is there
somewhere I can find a list of functions and what they do,
where to use them, etc?
Click to expand...

There are. Online help has lists of functions within function categories with
very brief descriptions. Peter Nonely has a better one,

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/noneley/

Or you could ask Norman Harker for his - see the bottom of his overly long
signature in one of his recent posts, like

http://www.google.com/groups?selm=#9bhtV#[email protected]

Now for a few comments. What's the level of sophistication of these people you'd
be training? If they're complete novices, you should concentrate on only the
following functions.

COUNT
COUNTA
SUM
AVERAGE
MAX
MIN
IF
ISERROR
ISNA
COUNTIF
SUMIF
VLOOKUP (possibly also HLOOKUP)

Others may suggest additional functions, but anyone grounded in how to use these
will be able to figure out how to use the next 30 or so commonly used functions
on their own. Note: I'm excluding all text and financial functions from this
list on purpose. Text functions would only be a confusion for novices. The
concepts underlying financial functions should be addressed on their own rather
than in an Excel context if these users don't know them already; however, if
your users already know the concepts, they should be able to figure out the
financial functions on their own once they learn the functions above.
 
Patt said:
I have been asked to do some training for Excel. Is there
somewhere I can find a list of functions and what they do,
where to use them, etc?
TIA
Click to expand...

Speaking as someone who asked more or less that question, the answer I got
was to use Help and ask for functions! You can print the the result of
"functions, listed by category" or even copy it, save and edit for your own
purposes.
 
Patt said:
I have been asked to do some training for Excel. Is there
somewhere I can find a list of functions and what they do,
where to use them, etc?
TIA
Click to expand...

Patt,

Here are some links that deal with functions. The first is a download
that has examples on a variety of commonly used functions.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/noneley/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/office97/html/S88F2.asp
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/topic.htm
http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/usertips/formulatips.htm
http://www2.odn.ne.jp/excel/functioninenglish.html#SEC10

Here are some books that deal with functions. I personally have only
perused the Walkenbach "Excel 2002 Formulas" book.

Excel 2000 Functions In Practice Patrick Blattner
Microsoft Excel Worksheet Function Reference Microsoft Press
Excel 2002 Formulas John Walkenbach
Excel Bible 2000 John Walkenbach

Here are two links that had decent discussions on functions. The first
contains a person who has a download on worksheet functions.

http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&th=9e5c93d3853afec9&rnum=8

http://www.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&th=9849c1f91da8a54b&rnum=3

HTH
Paul
 
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