Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Using the formula bar in Excel

The formula bar is the blank line between the spreadsheet column headings and the toobars. It displays the formula of the currently selected cell.
It can be used in a number of ways.
Typing text into it or typing numbers.
Creating formulas using the function wizard fx or by typing them directly.
You can copy and paste into it and out of it.
You can debug or audit a formula by clicking the = button at the front of it. This allows you to view all the components of a function and where possible excel parses the formula compnents to provide individual results. You can also see these directly by clicking and selecting the part of the formula you want to resolve and hitting F9. This will resolve that part of the formula into a value. Be careful with this, if you then enter and save the change the formula will be overwritten with the value. However this is a useful way of quickly determining the value of part of a formula.