Important EXCEL SKILLS - SUM AND IF

Hi everyone, today we start knowing how Excel works and which functions are important and which are the most used.

1- SUM

When you create a sheet in Excel, an important need is to do a sum. If the number of the cells are wise you can use this symbol:

                               

We explain the use of it with an example:

After you have inserted the values in the columns, for example from the cell B2 to B6, you click on SUM symbol and it does the sum of the adjacent row, or you can select the cells you care and click on the symbol:

Remember, if you don't want to use the symbol you can write in the cell:

=SUM(B2:B6).

In case of the SUM function, you have to indicate the area of the cells, writing the first one and the last one separate by ":" symbol.

The symbol ":" means always 'from....to', and you use it whenever you have to specify a range of cells.

2 - IF

This is one of the function more useful of the Excel. This is part of the LOGICAL functions, because it allows Excel to do analysis, and in base on it to do a specific action among different alternatives.

Excel does the test asked by the user, the test could be a verification of an equality or >/<; If the test is satisfied Excel does an action, in the opposite case it does another action.

To summarize:

1. You need IF when you want Excel performs one of several possible actions in base on what happened in a cell.
2. In the Function, remember to write the cells.
3. If you copy the function IF() in an adjacent cell, remember to block the cells that have to be fixed with $.

We can do an example:

In a table we put sales made by sellers of a company. In based on the amount of revenue, they get 10% if are under 50000$ and 15% if they got more.

We have created a column where we put the values, and from there we wrote our function IF.

For example:

=IF(B9<800; "insufficient"; IF (B9<900;"sufficient","we are doing good")) 

If you follow this way of thinking, you will able to make important and useful sheet that can help you in your work.

If you want more information leave a comment below.

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Keep the information useful for all of us!!

Emanuele Battista