Excel supports several similar but different functions that round numbers. Those functions will enable us to perform the following operations: * negative midpoint numbers are rounded away from zero, and not properly half-rounded up (towards positive) **the rounding direction is undefined for midpoint numbers, both rounding up and down can happen The ROUND function rounds a number to a specified number of digits. The ROUND function syntax is as follows: = ROUND ( number ; num_digits ) The ROUND …
Category: Excel Functions
TEXT function
In Excel, the TEXT function performs two operations: converts a number to text, at the same time, formats that number in a specified way. The TEXT function syntax is as follows: = TEXT ( value ; “format_text” ) Value can be any number, either inputted into the function or referenced. Format text nested inside quotation marks is based on the number format codes used in Excel. Excel number format codes can be copied from the Format Cells pop-up: …
ROW & COLUMN functions
In Excel, there are specific use cases where an exact row (column) number, or an exact number of rows (columns), are necessary for calculations. The ROW function returns the row number of a reference. The ROW function syntax is as follows: = ROW ( reference ) If reference is omitted, the number of the row in which the formula appears is returned. The COLUMN function returns the column number of a reference. The COLUMN function syntax is as …
Generate a random date and/or time
Generating random dates and/or timestamps in Excel is the same as generating any other random number. Keep in mind that no matter how dates and/or timestamps are formatted and possibly edited, the underlying values saved in cells are decimal numbers. Number 1, formatted as a date, will represent January 1, 1900. 44.916 will represent December 21, 2022. 44.916,888111 will be representing December 21, 2022, at 9:18 PM. Date and/or time stamps should be generated between two dates (within a …
Cleaning up text in Excel: CLEAN, TRIM, and SUBSTITUTE
In Excel, you will occasionally deal with text fields containing line breaks, multiple spaces, hyphenation, currency and letterlike symbols, etc. This is common when dealing with unrestricted user-inputted data and can cause issues. In particular, these kinds of values will be hard to connect with related values without cleanup. When we MATCH those values with related data tables, errors are bound to occur. Basic cleanup approaches include manual replacement of all of the unnecessary characters with a desired or …
EOMONTH function: calculate past or future date from the starting date
You will sometimes need to calculate one date based on another date. Most often, you will need the first or last date of the current month, the first or last date of the current year, the previous or future month, year, quarter dates, etc. No matter what kind of dates you need, the simplest way to generate them will include the EOMONTH function. The EOMONTH function returns the last day of the month in relation to the start date. …
SUMIFS by text string length
Values that meet one or more criteria can be added up with the SUMIFS function. The sum of values next to cells containing specific text, i.e., a sum based on text criteria, is possibly the most common use case. The sum of values next to cells containing (non) specific text of a defined length (the defined number of characters in a text string) is a far less common need, but still crucial in specific situations. We can accomplish this …
UNICODE and UNICHAR functions
The Unicode Standard is the primarily used scheme for internal processing and storage of text, with almost 150 thousand code points representing characters. The Unicode Standard is supported in Excel. However, some functions for text manipulation still support only ASCII or ANSI character sets. Examples of those include the CLEAN function and the TRIM function. The CODE function and the CHAR function used for character manipulation also fall into that category. Full character manipulation is available through the UNICODE function and …
Combining INDIRECT with ADDRESS
We’ve previously covered how we can use any function to generate a text that could be a valid cell reference, both the column and row parts of the address, and then use the INDIRECT function to convert that text to a cell reference. This process can be greatly enhanced by the ADDRESS function. The ADDRESS function returns a text string that represents the address of a particular cell. Row, column, type of reference (locked or absolute), reference style (A1 …
INDIRECT function
The INDIRECT function returns the reference specified by a text string. The INDIRECT function syntax is as follows: = INDIRECT ( reference_text ; reference_style ) Reference text can be any text that the function can “convert” to a cell reference. Reference style represents the style of referencing cells in Excel. If omitted or TRUE, the reference text is interpreted as an A1 style reference, i.e., the default style of referencing cells in Excel. If FALSE, the reference text is interpreted …