Few weeks ago, someone asked me “What are the top 10 formulas?” That got me thinking.
While each of us have our own list of favorite, most frequently used formulas, there is no standard list of top 10 formulas for everyone. So, today let me attempt that.
If you want to become a data or business analyst then you must develop good understanding of Excel formulas & become fluent in them.
A good analyst should be familiar with below 10 formulas to begin with.
1. SUMIFS Formula
If you listen very carefully, you can hear thousands of managers around the world screaming… “How many x we did in region A, product B, customer type C in month M?” right now.
To answer this question without the song and dance of excessive filtering & selecting, you must learn SUMIFS formula.
This magical formula can sum up a set of values that meet several conditions.
The syntax of SUMIFS is like this:
=SUMIFS( what you want to sumup, condition column 1, condition, condition column 2, condition….)
Example:
=SUMIFS(sales, regions, “A”, products, “B”, customer types, “C”, month, “M”)
Learn more about SUMIFS formula.
10 Advanced SUMIFS examples (video)
2. X/VLOOKUP Formula
Pop quiz time ….
Which of the below things would bring world to a grinding halt?
A. Stop digging earth for more oil
B. Let US jump off the fiscal cliff or hit debt ceiling
C. Suddenly VLOOKUP (or XLOOKUP) formula stops working in all computers, world-wide, forever
If you answered A or B, then its high time you removed your head from sand and saw the world.
The answer is C (Well, if all coffee machines in the world unite & miraculously malfunction that would make a mayhem. But thankfully that option is not there)
XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP formula lets you search for a value in a table and return a corresponding value. For example you can ask What is the name of the customer with ID=C00023 or How much is the product price for product code =p0089 and VLOOKUP would give you the answers.
The syntax for VLOOKUP is simple.
=VLOOKUP(what you want to lookup, table, column from which you want the output, is your table sorted? )
Example:
=VLOOKUP(“C00023”, customers, 2, false)
Lookup customer ID C00023 in the first column of customers table and return the value from 2nd column. Assume that customers table is not sorted.
Learn more about the new & improved XLOOKUP formula.
Click here to learn more about VLOOKUP Formula.
Bonus: Comprehensive guide to lookup formulas.
3. Dynamic Array Functions
Excel 365 introduced a new class of functions called DYNAMIC ARRAY FUNCTIONS. These will let you filter, sort, extract distinct values from your data with ease. It also added a special formula functionality called spill behavior. It means Excel formulas can now return multiple values as a result & spill them down as needed. See this quick GIF demo.
Learn more about the POWERFUL dynamic array functionality in Excel (video).
4. IF & IFS Formulas
Q: What do you call a business that does not make a single decision?
A: Government!
Jokes aside, every business needs to make decisions, even governments!!! So, how do we model these decisions in Excel.
Using IF formulas of course.
For example, lets say your company decides to give 10% pay hike to all people reading Chandoo.org & 5% hike to rest. Now, how would you express this in Excel?
Simple, we write =IF(employee reads Chandoo.org, “10% hike”, “5% hike”)
The syntax of IF formula is simple:
=IF (condition to test, output for TRUE, output for FALSE)
10 must know Advanced IF formulas.
5. Nesting Formulas
Unfortunately, businesses do not make simple decisions. They always complicate things. I mean, have you ever read income tax rules?!? Your head starts spinning by the time you reach 2nd paragraph.
To model such complex decisions & situations, you need to nest formulas.
Nesting refers to including one formula with in another formula.
An example situation: Give 12% hike to employees who read Chandoo.org at least 3 days a week, Give 10% hike to those who read Chandoo.org at least once a week, for the rest give 5% hike.
Excel Formula: =IF(number of times employee reads chandoo.org in a week >=3, “12% hike”, IF( number of times employee reads chandoo.org in a week >0, “10% hike”, “5% hike”))
You see what we did above? We used IF formula inside another IF formula. This is nothing but nesting.
You can nest any formula inside another formula almost any number of times.
Nesting formulas helps us express complex business logic & rules with ease. As an analyst, you must learn the art of nesting.
Lots of nested formula examples & explanations here.
6. Basic Arithmetic Expressions
=(((123+456)*(789+987)) > ((123-456)/(789-987)))^3 & " time I saw a tiger"
If you read the above expression and not had to scratch your head once, then you are on way to become an awesome analyst.
Most people jump in to Excel formulas without first learning various basic operators & expressions. Fortunately, learning these requires very little time. Most of us have gone thru basic arithmetic & expressions in school. Here is a summary if you were caught napping in Math 101.
| Operator | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| + – * / | Basic arithmetic operators. Perform addition, subtraction, multiplication & division | 2+3, 7-2, 9*12, 108/3, 2+3*4-2 |
| ^ | Power of opetator. Raises something to the power of other value. | 2^3, 9^0.5, PI()^2, EXP(1)^0.5 |
| ( ) | To define precedence in calculations. Anything included in paranthesis is calcuated first. | (2+3)*(4+5) calcuates 2+3 first, then 4+5 and multiplies both results. |
| & | To combine 2 text values | “You are ” & “awesome” returns “You are awesome” |
| % | To divide with 100. | 2/4% will give 50 as result. Note: (2/4)% will give 0.5% as result. |
| : | Used to specify ranges | A1:B20 refers to the range from cell A1 to B20 |
| $ | To lock a reference column or row or both | $A$1 refers to cell A1 all the time. $A1 refers to column A, relative row based on where you use it. For more refer to absolute vs. relative references in Excel. |
| [ ] | Used to structurally refer to columns in table | ourSales[month] refers to the month column in the ourSales table. Works only in Excel 2007 or above. Know more about Excel Tables. |
| @ | Used to structurally refer to current row values in a table | ourSales[@month] refers to current row’s month value in oursales table. |
| # | Spill Operator (Excel 365) | Used to get spill range from a dynamic array formula |
| { } | To specify an inline array of values | {1,2,3,4,5} – refers to a the list of values 1,2,3,4,5 |
| < > <= >= | Comparison operators. Output will always be boolean – ie TRUE or FALSE. | 2>3 will be FALSE. 99<101 will be TRUE. |
| = <> | Equality operators. Check whether 2 values are equal or not equal. Output will TRUE or FALSE | 2=2, “hello”=”hello”, 4<>5 will all return TRUE. |
| * ? | Used as wild cards in certain formulas like COUNTIFS etc. | COUNTIFS(A1:A10, “a*”) counts the values in range A1:A10 starting with a. For more on this refer to COUNTIFS & SUMIFS in Excel |
| SPACE | Intersection operator. Returns the range at intersection of 2 ranges | A1:C4 B2:D5 refers to the intersection or range A1:C4 and B2:D5 and returns B2:C4. Caution: The output will be an array, so you must use it in another formula which takes arrays, like SUM, COUNT etc. |
7. Text formulas
While there are more than two dozen text formulas in Excel including the mysterious BHATTEXT (which is used to convert numbers to Thai Bhats, apparently designed by Excel team so that they could order Thai take out food #), you do not need to learn all of them. By learning few very useful TEXT formulas, you can save a ton of time when cleaning data or extracting portions from mountains of text.
As an aspiring analyst, at-least acquaint your self with below formulas:
- LEFT, RIGHT & MID – to extract portions of text from left, right & middle.
- TRIM – to remove un-necessary spaces from beginning, middle & end of a text.
- SUBSTITUTE – to replace portions of text with something else.
- LEN – to calculate the length of a text
- TEXT – to convert a value to TEXT formatting
- FIND – to find whether something is present in a text, if so at what position
Here are my top 6 TEXT formulas for data analysis.
8. NETWORKDAYS & WORKDAY Formulas
“There aren’t enough days in the weekend” – Somebody
Whether a weekend has enough days or not, as working analyst, you must cope with the working day calculations. For example, if a project takes 180 working days to complete and starts on 16th of January 2013, how would you find the end date?
Thankfully, we do not have to invent a formula for this. Excel has something exactly for this. WORKDAY formula takes a start date & working days and tells you what the end date would be.
Like wise NETWORKDAYS formula tells us how many working days are there between any 2 given dates.
Both these formulas accept a list of additional holidays to consider as well.
- NETWORKDAYS: calculate the number of working days between 2 dates (assuming Saturday, Sunday weekend)
- NETWORKDAYS.INTL: Same as NETWORKDAYS, but lets you use custom weekends [Excel 2010+ only]
- WORKDAY: Calculate the end date from a start date & number of working days
- WORKDAY.INTL: Same as WORKDAY, but lets you use custom weekends. [Excel 2010+ only]
More on working with Date & Time values in Excel.
9. SMALL & LARGE Formulas
Almost nobody asks about “Who was the second person to climb Mt. Everest, or walk on moon or finish 100 mtrs race the fastest?”.
And yet, all businesses ask questions like “Who is our 2nd most valuable customer?, third vendor from bottom on invoice delinquency? 4th famous coffee shop in Jamaica?”
So as analysts our job is to answer these questions with out wasting too much time. That is where SMALL, LARGE formulas come in handy.
- SMALL: Used to find nth smallest value from a list. Use it like =SMALL(range of values, n).
- LARGE: Used to find nth largest value from a list.
- MIN: Gives the minimum value of a list.
- MAX: Gives the maximum value of a list.
- RANK: Finds the rank of a value in a list. Use it like =RANK(value, in this list, order)
10. IFERROR Formula
Errors, lousy canteen food & dysfunctional coffee machines are eternal truths of corporate life. While you can always brown bag your lunch & bring a flask of finely brewed coffee to work, there is no escaping when your VLOOKUP #N/As. Or is there?
Well, you can always use the lovely IFERROR formula to handle errors in your formulas.
Syntax:
IFERROR(formula, what to do in case of error)
Use it like:
IFERROR(VLOOKUP(….), “Value not found!”)
Click here to learn more about IFERROR Formula.
3 Bonus Formulas
If you can master the above 10 formulas, you will be ahead of 80% of all Excel analysts. Here are 3 more important formulas that can come handy when doing some serious data analysis work.
- OFFSET formula: to generate dynamic ranges from a starting point and use them elsewhere (in charts, formulas etc.).
- SUMPRODUCT formula: Unleash the full power of Excel array processing by using SUMPRODUCT.
- SUBTOTAL formula: Calculate totals, counts & averages etc. on a range with filters.
Top 10 Excel Formulas – Video
If you like a video presentation of these formulas with some demos, check this out.
Sample file & more on the concepts shown in the video here.
What formulas do you think are important for analysts?
During my days as business analyst, not a single day went by without using Excel. It was an important tool in my journey to become an awesome analyst. I cannot stress the importance of formulas like SUMIFS, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH enough. They play a vital role in analyzing data & presenting outputs.
What about you? What formulas do you think are important for analysts? Please share your ideas & tips using comments.
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28 Responses to “Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools using Excel [Part 2 of 6]”
[...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools Part 3: Preparing a project time line [upcoming] Part 4: Time sheets and Resource management [...]
the templates are great (I bought the combo).
What I'm missing is a way to have the project gantt chart and reporting with the data per resource, in such a way that I can also show the occupation per resource on an extended gantt chart.
So with hours entered per person per project or sub-activity, to show a gantt chart of how many hours/days a person spent on which project (or plans to spend).
[...] from: Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools using Excel [Part 2 of 6] 25 Jun 09 | [...]
Hi Chandoo,
Funny I have a post on the value of MS project lined up which I will post when the current monster project I'm working on finishes and I get some free time!
I'm not sure this would help with any of the projects I've worked on, closing down a to do list seems like more effort than it's worth, but it might be useful for some things. I guessing it doesn't, but does the time stamp not update when you recalculate the work book?
keep up the good work!
Ross
@Ross.. Thanks for sharing your ideas... I think to do lists are a great way to keep up with project activities and ensure accountability from individual team members, when they are implemented right.
"I guessing it doesn’t, but does the time stamp not update when you recalculate the work book?"
Your guess is right. When you change the calculation mode to "iterative", excel takes care of the nittygritties and retains older values in circular references in formulas.
[...] Project Management in Excel [New Series] - Gantt Charts | To Do Lists [...]
[...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools Project Status Reporting - Create a Timeline to display milestones Part 4: Time sheets and Resource [...]
Hi Chandoo,
The template give me lot of convenience to monitor the thing to do. It simple. Thank You
[...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists - Project Tracking Tools Project Status Reporting - Create a Timeline to display milestones Part 4: Time sheets and Resource [...]
[...] make sure you have read the first 4 parts of the series - Making gantt charts [project planning], team todo lists [project tracking], project time lines chart [reporting] and Timesheets and Resource Management using Excel. Also [...]
Chandoo,
I really do not see any befit to this function in Excel unless it was somehow tied into some other chart. That is say a scheduled activities % complete is based on the to-do list.
The only way this chart would be useful is if no one was assigned none dependent task that could be done by anyone. The cases were both of these conditions are true are so few and far between it really makes this chart worthless.
@Brian... Once you have a todo list up and running, it is easy to get metrics out of it. I didnt propose it as it might look a bit too micro-management-ish.
I am able to understand what you meant by "The only way this chart would be useful is if no one was assigned none dependent task that could be done by anyone. The cases were both of these conditions are true are so few and far between it really makes this chart worthless."
Can you explain?
"Chandoo"
What I mean is this. Lets say you have 10 task which are part of one activity/WBS that is in your schedule. One there are very few cases were many people would be assigned to complete this one scheduled activity with no direction being given who should what of the 10 task. It is poor management, and the task 90% of the time would not get done in a timely manner if say 4 people were responsible. Secondly, you are assuming all 10 task are independent of each other. You might need to do task 1 thru 3 before you can do task 4, and to do task 7 you might need to do 4 and 6. Thirdly, the time it would take to compile and then fill out the to-do-list even in limited applications is really not worth it.
I just see almost no applications why a team would need to inform others separate from the schedule that they have completed a task on a to-do list unless anyone of the 4 people could of completed that task.
My point is, there might be a few very limited applications for this type of list but this list would be worthless as a Project Management tool in every other case.
However, change this from a to-do-list to a document change log and it is perfect. Instead of to-do it is the documents name or summary of what changed in the document. The person is who edited the document, and the time stamp is when they checked it in. But I do not know why you would use excel when there is free software you can use commercially that is 10 times better that does document management.
I think using excel to do Project Management over a real Project Management application is a bad idea. Unless you are running a very small, simple project, the time and effort is a lot more to use excel compared to the cost of the Project Management software.
This comes back to my point, I love your site, however, just because you can do something in excel does not mean you should do it. To often the time it takes to use excel is wasted 10 times over from the cost of doing it in an application designed to for the specific application.
@Brian: The todo list mentioned here is meant to keep track of all the tasks for which detailed planning is not necessary but some sort of tracking is needed. These are not be confused with project activities (a la gantt chart).
I like your suggestion about using this as a document tracker. Pretty cool use.
Coming to your point about excel as a real project management tool, well, I have my views, but in a serious project environment, it would surely payoff to have a dedicated project management application.
[...] & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones Time sheets and Resource [...]
Chandoo,
Wonder how the timestamp column will maintain its previous data. Both Today() and Now() functions will update as and when the next timestamp happens.
[...] Preparing & tracking a project plan using Gantt Charts Part2: Team To Do Lists – Project Tracking Tools Part3: Project Status Reporting – Create a Timeline to display milestones Part4: Time sheets and [...]
I've combined this with the issue tracker since I like the automatic date stamp, but one thing I'm noticing is that I can't replicate the chart that goes along with the issue tracker because the cells that are referenced have the formula that inserts the time stamp instead of a the actual date value. All the dates of the last 30 days display 0 when they should have a value.
Is there a way around this?
I have edited the chart so that my team members can update the percentage completion of the assigned tasks. When the cell is updated, i would like the time stamp to update. How would I manipulate the formula to update whenever the drop-down list is changed?
[...] … ??? To Do List [...]
Excel is great however sometimes you need to get a better idea of what tasks each person on your team is working on at any given time. We've developed a web app that can do just that! Each person has a list of tasks, listed in the order they have to complete them.
HII,
I want to expand the database through excel where i am working on 11 cities as of now and i want to expand it upto 50 cities and hence forth the data related to it will also expand so i want to make it precise where i can get updates also that this work is required to be done at that particular day or date
Thanks for making all of this information available for free. I am currently using excel to track everything for the first time. I later plan to output our information here with a more visual presentation. Wish me luck!
Can some one point me out to some additional direction on the "Who Finished it?" column? Something more 'basic' for a newbie excel guy? lol I got everything else working on this tutorial but that column. I can't seem to recreate it and I know a lot of it is due to lack of knowledge with VB code. I'd like to recreate this column very much 🙁
Dear Chandoo,
Thanks for the team to do list, kindly let me know how to set the column who " finished it " from another work sheet
Hi Chandoo,
Unable to download it - can you please check the link and confirm.
Great inhisgt! That's the answer we've been looking for.
Hi Team,
I know u all are the best programmers in the world!!! that's I am here to rectify my issues. here is my question please ans me as soon as possible before 8-3-2017 its really urgent.
I have a project named the production tracker.
1) I require the user form which shows the names of the Associates which are linked to the different tracks. when the user is selected the particular track related details and dropdowns should appear.
2) I need to track the associate needs how much of the time to complete the particular task. with start stop and pause and resume timer.
3) It should display the daily count of the production and save the data to the another Excel file.
this production tracker should save all the data no matter how many people logs in into it.
Please help me for this it will be very appreciated.
you can directly email me on my mail ID: tusharkch694@gmail.com