4.1 Functions and the Formulas Tab – Intro to Excel 2016 Data Analysis

​There are 484 functions available for Excel 2016 as of the year 2021. Functions are divided up into categories. Formulas/functions in Excel 2016 are categorized by how they are used in Excel.
These are the following functions categories in Excel 2016 as they appear on the Formulas tab Ribbon from left-to-right:

• Financial
• Logical
• Text
• Date & Time
• Lookup & Reference
• Math & Trig
• More Functions:
  • Statistical
  • Engineering
  • Cube
  • Information
  • Compatibility
  • Web

               
If you select the Formulas tab, you will see something similar to the graphic below. For example, if you are desiring a function that involves manipulating text data in your worksheet, you would probably want to investigate the “Text” category, which we see in the graphic below. By selecting the “Text” icon on the Ribbon, we see a drop-down menu with a list of the various functions that are related to text usage in your worksheet. Let’s imagine we are interested in the “LEFT” function.
By selecting it from the menu, we can further gain additional information on its usage.

We can gain additional information by selecting the blue weblink, “Help on this function”. The Function Arguments dialog box shown below also assists us in inputting the arguments necessary for the function to operate. 

​The help information we see gives an example of how to use the LEFT() function below: