Microsoft Office Professional 2010 Step by Step eBook

You can locate a function, if you don’t know its name, by entering key descriptors in the

Search For A Function box and then clicking Go.

The following table describes some of the most useful functions in the list.

Function Description

SUM Finds the sum of the numbers in the specified cells

AVERAGE Finds the average of the numbers in the specified cells

COUNT Finds the number of entries in the specified cells

MAX Finds the largest value in the specified cells

MIN Finds the smallest value in the specified cells

Two other functions you might use are the NOW and PMT functions. The NOW func-

tion displays the time Excel updated the workbook’s formulas, so the value will change

every time the workbook recalculates. The proper form for this function is =NOW().

To update the value to the current date and time, just press the F9 key or display the

Formulas tab and then, in the Calculation group, click the Calculate Now button. You

could, for example, use the NOW function to calculate the elapsed time from when

you started a process to the present time.

Creating Formulas to Calculate Values 287