The Top 6 Excel Formulas Every Office Worker Should Know

In a fast-paced office environment, time is everything. Inability to handle Excel can waste precious hours, but what if you have the right tools to deal with these challenges? These six essential Excel formulas are the shortcuts you need to save time, increase productivity, and make your daily workload much lighter.

IF and IFS

IF is one of the most commonly used logical functions in Excel. It tests a condition and evaluates to TRUE or FALSE. The IF formula has two possible outputs, one when the condition is TRUE and the other when the condition is FALSE.

Both of these functions can save a lot of time in an office environment. HR specialists can use the IF function to automate employee performance reviews. The simple IF formula given below can be used to categorize employees based on their performance ratings.

SUM and SUMIFS

It can take numbers, cell references, and cell ranges as parameters. You can use the SUM function to calculate totals for columns or rows of data. In a budget spreadsheet, you can use =SUM(B2:B10) to sum expenditures over a specific period.

In practice, the SUMIFS formula can only be used to add up sales from a specific region, for a particular product, or by a particular vendor. SUM and SUMIFS are just two of the SUM functions in Excel.

AGGREGATE

The AGGREGATE function combines various numeric aggregation functions into one. It performs calculations like SUM, COUNT, MAX, and MIN while ignoring errors, hidden cells, and even other AGGREGATE and SUBTOTAL functions.

Where function_num denotes the calculation to be performed, options determine what to ignore (for example, hidden rows or errors), ref is the range of cells or array of cells to be aggregated, and k is an optional argument for some functions.

AGGREGATE is especially useful in large datasets where standard functions such as SUM or AVERAGE may be hindered by hidden data or errors.

In the example below, AGGREGATE is applied to a table with errors to calculate the total, average, and highest salary received by employees.

TRIM

The TRIM function cleans data and removes extra spaces from the text. It is especially useful for raw data that has been imported from an external source. It removes all extra spaces from the text, including leading, trailing, and middle spaces.

MIN and MAX

The MIN and MAX functions are easy to use and very straightforward. They take a range of numbers and find the smallest or largest value in the set. When the cells to be analyzed are scattered around the spreadsheet, they can be used as an alternative to Excel\’s AutoSum.

These functions are particularly useful for data analysis, such as identifying the highest and lowest sales figures in a report or monitoring the best and worst performing products in a lineup. They are two essential Excel functions for beginners.