Microsoft Excel 2003: Functions (Continued)

One of the really neat things about these Help windows is that there are examples for each function. We moved down the SUM help screen using the elevator bar on the right of the help screen. The bottom of the screen looks like the image at the top of the next page. Spend a few minutes looking at the SUM Help window and notice all of the features.


The bottom of the SUM help screen looks like the image on the left. Notice that it gives you examples from a small spreadsheet that has data in cells A1 through A6. It uses these numbers in the examples at the bottom of the help screen.

When you have reviewed all of the help you care to see, carefully click-on the X at the upper right corner of the Microsoft Office Excel Help blue bar to close the Microsoft Excel Help window.


The Function Arguments menu screen will still be on the screen.


If the Office Assistant is still on the screen simply point to it and click the RIGHT mouse button. A pop-up menu will appear. Click-on Hide. This will put the Assistant away until we need it again



As you can see, in the area to the right of Number 1, the “Wizard” has “guessed” that you want to add the numbers in the range C6 to C8. Now that you are becoming proficient with Excel, we’ll try something special. Carefully, point to some “plain part,” in the gray area above. Click and hold down the left mouse button, and drag the above SUM box “away” so that you can see your numbers in C column cells. When you have done this, release the mouse button. Now click-on the “small box” on the right edge of the Number 1 area (see arrow above). It has a little red arrow in it.

The below Function Arguments window will appear.


Highlight cells C6 to C8 in the spreadsheet (click-on C6, hold down the left mouse button, and drag until the three cells are highlighted). A “marquee” will begin to flash around the cells, indicating they are highlighted (left arrow above). The Function Arguments area will appear as above. Now click-on the small button on the right of the cell (see right arrow above). The numbers will show in the area to the right of Number 1. Now, click-on OK at the bottom of the Function Arguments menu screen. You’ll see that the SUM formula [=SUM(C6:C8)] shows in the formula area at the top of the screen. This is a really handy method to highlight a “group” of numbers you want to add.

Microsoft Excel 2003: Functions

There are a number of formulas built into Excel, like Sum. These formulas are called Functions. Below the Menu Bar (see right) you will see a “sigma” ∑ with a small down triangle to the right of the sigma (see arrow on diagram to the right). Click on the down triangle. The drop down menu that you see on the right will appear. Move down to More Functions and click-on More Functions.

Two menu screens will now appear at the same time. An “Office Assistant” will appear (see image on left of next page) and you can ask it questions (the little assistant may be a paper clip or just about anything). The Insert Function menu screen will also appear (see image on right of next page). The two menu screens work together to assist you when you are using functions.





Let’s work with the Insert Function menu screen. Click-on the small down arrow to the right of Or select a category: (see arrow at left).

In the drop down menu that appears you can see that there are all kinds of formulas (functions) that come with Excel spreadsheet (e.g. statistical, mathematical, financial, etc.). Instead of having to go to math, financial, or statistical tables in a book, you can enter data from your spreadsheet into the formulas and receive answers.


This is a really great, timesaving feature. We’ll now show you how to use the Help features of Excel 2003 to work with and understand these functions.



Click-on All in the drop down menu.



Look at all the functions (formulas)! We’ll just go through how to use the addition formula (SUM) in this tutorial. If you need these formulas in the future, you’ll know they’re here.


Use the elevator bar on the right side of the Select a function menu screen to move down the list until you see SUM. Click-on SUM.



Then click-on OK.

Remember, you clicked-on Cell C9 – which was “empty” because you deleted the formula in that cell.


When you click-on OK, the Function Arguments menu screen (above) will appear. If you look at the top of the screen in the SUM area, you’ll see that Excel 2003 has “guessed” that you desire to add the numbers above cell C9 – where you clicked in your spreadsheet. Smart Excel! Notice that it indicates that cells C6:C8 will be added (sum cells C6 through C8 – the colon (:) means “through.” It also indicates the numbers in cells C6, C7 and C8 and give you the sum {300;50;150} = 500 (right arrow above).

But it’s a little unclear how Excel did this. The Help in Excel Functions is excellent. So, to see how this SUM equation works, we’ll go to Help. To do this, click-on Help on this function in the lower left corner of the screen (see lower left arrow above).



On the right side of your screen you will see a Microsoft Office Excel Help window appear (similar to the one above) that will show you how to use this SUM function (or any function).