Lesson 7

Preview

Functions and the Formulas Tab in Excel 2016

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 FIGURE 1 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 FIGURE 1 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.

Figure 1

The Function Arguments dialog box shown below in FIGURE 2, assists us in inputting the arguments necessary for the LEFT function to operate.

In the “Text” box of the Function Arguments dialog box we would enter the data we want to manipulate. Since we only are interested in the numerical portion (the 728) we would enter a “3” in the Num_chars box. On the Functions Arguments dialog box, it shows the result (= “728).

We can obtain additional information about the LEFT function by selecting the blue weblink, “Help on this function”.

Figure 2

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

Figure 3

We can see from viewing FIGURE 3 above, we are given clear details on how to use the LEFT function.

Insert Function Tool

The Insert Function tool is great to use if you are new to Excel formulas and functions and are experiencing some difficulty formulating your function with the correct arguments (parameters). This discussion/tutorial on usage of the Insert Function Tool should help you through this process.

The Insert Function tool can be used with any Excel function.

You can access the Insert Function tool from any Excel tab since the Insert Function icon is located on the Ribbon next to the Formula Bar, shown below. It is also located on the Formula tab, shown in FIGURE 4 below.