Let’s face it. You already know the SUMs & COUNTs of Excel. But what should you learn next? There are more than 400 functions in Excel and most of them are useless for day-to-day situations. So, in this page, let me highlight the TOP 10 EXCEL FUNCTIONS for data analysis work.
The TOP 10 Excel Functions
Here are the top 10 functions you should learn and master first.
- SUMIFS
- XLOOKUP
- FILTER
- COUNTIFS
- INDEX
- EDATE
- UNIQUE
- TEXTJOIN
- SORT
- IFERROR
TOP 10 Excel functions - Video
If you want to understand what these functions are how to use them either read on or watch the below video.
1. SUMIFS
Use SUMIFS to add up values that meet one or more conditions. Example uses:
- Total sales to England
- Total donations made to charity cause A in the last 7 days
SUMIFS Syntax
SUMIFS(values you want to add,
condition 1 range, condition 1,
condition 2 range, condition 2…)
SUMIFS example
=SUMIFS(A1:A10, B1:B10, “London”)
Adds up all values in A1:A10 where B1:B10 is London
Learn more about SUMIFS:
2. XLOOKUP
Use XLOOKUP to search for a value in a list and return corresponding value from another list. For example:
- Get due date for invoice number 934
- Find price for the product code PR023
👉🏼 XLOOKUP Syntax
XLOOKUP(value to find,
list to look in,
what do you want to get,
what to do if not found)
💡 XLOOKUP example
=XLOOKUP(“Almond Choco”, Product[name], Product[price])
Finds the price of Almond Choco in the Product table.
Learn more about XLOOKUP:
3. FILTER
Use FILTER to filter a list or table and see matching results for your criteria. This is a dynamic array function. That means, if there are more than one values, Excel automatically spills the values and shows them on the sheet. For example:
- List all sales records for “John”
- Find out which students have attended all sessions of Physics-301 class.
👉🏼 FILTER Syntax
FILTER(your data, filter criteria
what to show if no values are filtered)
💡 FILTER example
=FILTER(Product, Product[price]>20)
Lists all the Product table rows where the price is more than 20.
4. COUNTIFS
Use COUNTIFS to count how many values meet one or more conditions in your data. For example:
- Number of times “Adam” exceeded $1,000 order value
- How many recipes use Paprika?
👉🏼 COUNTIFS Syntax
COUNTIFS(condition 1 list, condition 1,
condition 2 list, condition 2…)
💡 COUNTIFS example
=COUNTIFS(Orders[name], “Adam”, Orders[value],”>1000″)
Counts how many times Adam’s order value is more than 1000.
Learn more about COUNTIFS:
5. INDEX
Use INDEX to get a value in a list by specifying the position. INDEX formula returns the reference instead of a value. This makes it quite versatile. It is my favorite Excel function.
For example:
- What is the 12th item in the invoice list?
- Get all the values in 3rd column of the order data.
👉🏼 INDEX Syntax
INDEX(your data, row number, column number)
💡 INDEX example
=INDEX(FILTER(Product[name], Product[price]>20), 3)
Returns the 3rd product name which has price more than 20. Here, INDEX is reading the output of FILTER.
Learn more about INDEX:
6. EDATE
Use EDATE to calculate a future or past date after a specified number of months.
For example:
- What is the date 7 months after project start date?
- What is the date exactly two years ago from today?
👉🏼 EDATE Syntax
EDATE(date, months)
💡 EDATE example
=EDATE(TODAY(), -24)
Returns the date exactly two years ago from today.
Learn more about Date functions:
7. UNIQUE
Use UNIQUE to remove any duplicates in your list. This is a Dynamic Array Function, so Excel will return and spill multiple values if needed.
For example:
- What products are sold?
- Which students have joined only one sports club?
👉🏼 UNIQUE Syntax
UNIQUE(your data)
💡 UNIQUE example
=UNIQUE(Order[Product])
Returns all the products from Order table. If a product appears multiple times, it will show up only once.
Learn more about UNIQUE function:
8. TEXTJOIN
Use TEXTJOIN to combine a bunch of values with a specified delimiter.
For example:
- Combine all product names to one text value with comma delimited.
- All names of students who joined Maths 203 course in March 2022.
👉🏼 TEXTJOIN Syntax
TEXTJOIN(delimiter, ignore empty values?, your data)
💡 TEXTJOIN example
=TEXTJOIN(“, “,TRUE,
FILTER(Enrollments[name], Enrollments[course]=”Maths-203″))
Combines all student names in the Maths-203 program in comma separated format.
Learn more about TEXTJOIN function:
9. SORT
Use SORT to sort a list or table in ascending or descending order. This is a Dynamic Array Function, so Excel will spill your outputs as needed.
For example:
- Sort the Orders table to show highest values on top.
- List students by department and name in alphabetical order.
👉🏼 SORT Syntax
SORT(your data, sort column, sort order)
💡 SORT example
=SORT(Enrollments, {1,2}, {1,1})
Sorts the Enrollments table in the ascending (alphabetical) order by department and student name (columns 1 & 2 of the table).
Learn more about SORT function:
10. IFERROR
Use IFERROR to stop error messages from showing up on the screen.
For example:
- Calculate sales commission but print 0 if there is an error.
- Get the 10th item of a filtered list, but show “not enough items” if there is an error.
👉🏼 IFERROR Syntax
IFERROR(your formula, error message to show)
💡 IFERROR example
=IFERROR(INDEX(FILTER(Product[name], Product[price]>20), 10), “Not enough items”)
Tries to get the 10th product with price >20, but if there is an error, prints “Not enough items”.
Learn more about IFERROR function:
Download Example Workbook
I have prepared an Excel file with 20+ examples for these important functions. Click here to download and play with the workbook.
Change the values / formulas or use the data set to develop your own formulas.
More on Formulas & Functions
If you are just starting out, I suggest focusing and mastering the above 10 functions first. But if you are ready to next level, then go thru the below articles & resources for more.
- 35 shortcuts & tricks to make you an #AWESOME Data Analyst
- 100+ Excel formula examples
- 15+ Examples of SUMIFS & COUNTIFS (video)
- COURSE: Excel formulas & other important skills for Data Analysis – Excel School
Happy learning.
12 Responses to “29 Excel Formula Tips for all Occasions [and proof that PHD readers truly rock]”
Some great contributions here.
Gotta love the Friday 13th formula 😀
Great tips from you all! Thanks a lot for sharing! bsamson, particularly you helped me on a terribly annoying task. 🙂
(BTW, Chandoo, it's not exactly "Find if a range is normally distributed" what my suggestion does. It checks if two proportions are statistically different. I probably gave you a bad explanation on twitter, but it'd be probably better if you fix it here... 🙂 )
Great compilation Chandoo
For the "Clean your text before you lookup"
=VLOOKUP(CLEAN(TRIM(E20)),F5:G18,2,0)
I would like to share a method to convert a number-stored-as-text before you lookup:
=VLOOKUP(E20+0,F5:G18,2,0)
@Peder, yeah, I loved that formula
@Aires: Sorry, I misunderstood your formula. Corrected the heading now.
@John.. that is a cool tip.
Hey Chandoo,
That p-value formula is really great for a statistics person like me.
What a p-value essentially is, is the probability that the results obtained from a statistical test aren't valid. So for example, if my p value is .05, there's a 5% probability that my results are wrong.
You can play with this if you install the Data Analysis Toolpak (which will perform some statistical tests for you AND provide the P Value.)
Let's say for example I've got two weeks of data (separated into columns) with the number of hours worked per day. I want to find out if the total number of hours I worked in week two were really all the different than week one.
Week1 Week2
10 11
12 9
9 10
7 8
5 8
Go to Data > Data Analysis > T-Test Assuming Unequal Variances > OK
In the Variable 1 Box, select the range of data for week 1.
In the Variable 2 Box, select the range of data for week 2.
Check "Labels"
In the Alpha box, select a value (in percentage terms) for how tolerant you are of error.
.05 is the general standard; that is to say I am willing to accept a 95% level of confidence that my result is accuarate.
Select a range output.
Excel calculates a number of results: Average (mean) for each week's data, etc.
You'll notice however that there are two P Values; one-tail and two-tail. (one tail tests are for > or .05), the number of hours I worked in week two is statistically equivalent to the number of hours I worked in week one.
So here’s a way you might want to use this. You put up a new entry on your blog. You think it’s the best entry ever! So you pull your webstats for this week and compare it to last week. You gather data for each week on the length of time a visitor spends on your website. The question you’re trying to prove statistically is whether there’s an average increase in the amount of time spent on your website this week as compared to last week (as a result of your fancy new blog post). You can run the same statistical test I illustrated above to find out. Incidentally, it matters very little to the stat test whether the quantity of visitors differs or not.
Anyhow, the Data Analysis toolpack doesn't perform a lot of stat tests that folks like me would like to have access to. In those cases I have to either use different software, or write some very complicated mathematical formulas. Having this p-value formula makes my life a LOT easier!
Thanks!
Eric~
Fantastic stuf..One line explanation is cool.
Thanks to all the contributors
OS
Take FirstName, MI, LastName in access (you can fix it to work in excel) capitalize first letter of each and lowercase the rest and add ". " if MI exists then same for last name:
Full Name: Format(Left([FirstName],1),">") & Format(Right([FirstName]),Len([FirstName])-1),"") & ". ","") & Format(Left([LastName],1),">") & Format(Right([LastName],Len([LastName])-1),"<")
I teach excel, access, etc etc for a living and i have my access students build this formula one step at a time from the inside out to show how formulas can be made even if it looks complicated. Yes I know I could just do IsNull([MI]) and reverse the order in the Iif() function but the point here is to nest as many functions as possible one by one (also I illustrate how it will fail without the Not() as it is)
Extract the month from a date
The easiest formula for this is =MONTH(a1)
It will return a 1 for January, 2 for February etc.
if in a column we write the value of total person for eg. 10 if we spent 1.33 paise each person then how we get total amount in next column and the result will in round form plzzzzz solve my problem sir................... thank u
@Anjali
If the value 10 is in B2 and 1.33 paise is in C2 the formula in D2 could be =B2*C2
If the values are a column of values you can copy the formula down by copy/paste or drag the small black handle at the bottom right corner of cell D2
kindly share with me new forumulas.
How to convert a figure like 870.70 into 870 but 871.70 into 880 using excel formula ? Please help.