Sunday, September 21, 2025

Formulas & Functions

Virtually everything business users do with Excel involves worksheet formulas and functions. And this category concentrates on that topic.

This category also includes what Microsoft calls “Names”—which many of us call “Range Names.” More accurately, however, “Names” are named formulas.

Check tags for information about specific functions.

Excel's STOCKHISTORY function can return decades of history about the prices of stocks for thousands of public companies from many countries. Here's an introduction to that function.

Introducing Excel’s STOCKHISTORY Function

The STOCKHISTORY function recently showed up in my non-beta version of Excel 365. Its appearance was a surprise because it wasn't announced as a What's...
Here's how you can split delimited text into an array with a short Excel formula, and then wrap the formula with the INDEX function to return any value from the array.

How to Split and Index Delimited Text with Excel Formulas

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For the longest time I've wished that Microsoft would add a SPLIT function to Excel. The function would have a syntax like this... =SPLIT(text, delimiter,...
I used the FILTER function to give me IFS-like power for PERCENTILE.INC. But then I realized the same pattern brings IFS-like power to many functions—including MEDIAN, STDEV.S, GEOMEAN, and perhaps even the FORECAST functions!

Using the Hidden Power of Excel’s FILTER Function

When you take the time to explore a new worksheet function, it's amazing what you can discover! And I won't tell you about the really...
Using Excel's LET, SORTBY, and SEQUENCE functions, and dynamic arrays, you easily can list any number of top and bottom results from a Table.

How to Report Top and Bottom Results Using Dynamic Arrays in Excel

In How to Use Excel’s LET Function, I showed several examples of a powerful function that Microsoft added to Excel 365 in the summer...
The LET function is the most powerful function that Microsoft has released for Excel in years. Here's an introduction to its features.

How to Use Excel’s LET Function

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In the summer of 2020, Microsoft introduced the LET function for Excel 365—one of the most-significant new worksheet functions that Microsoft has introduced in...
Here's how to create an Excel array from two others, with the arrays stacked either one on top of the other, or side-by-side, like books on a shelf.

How to Stack and Shelve Dynamic Arrays

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While using Excel 365 recently, I needed to create one dynamic array that would consist of two arrays, with one stacked on top of...
To use Account Groups in Excel formulas, you first must define the groups. Here’s how to do it using either simple lists or Dynamic Arrays.

How to Define General Ledger Account Groups in Excel

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In Part 1 of this series, How to Report GL Account Groups in Excel, we explored the strategy for creating financial reports that use...
We compare Excel's five columnar lookup functions.

XLOOKUP vs VLOOKUP vs INDEX-MATCH vs SUMIFS

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SUMIFS? Really? Why is SUMIFS included among those lookup methods? I'll explain in a few minutes. But first, let's look at the lookup methods shown in...
How to aggregate named groups of GL accounts.

How to Report GL Account Groups in Excel

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Believe it or not, this income statement is quite sophisticated. It's not nearly as simple-minded as it looks. In fact, this income statement illustrates a...
In Excel, you can report named groups of GL account numbers, product codes, and so on—just as you report one such number. Here’s how.

How to Use Array Formulas to Report Groups of Accounts

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Often, in accounting, marketing, and other departments, we'd like to report and analyze groups of items rather than one item at a time. In Part...

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Growing too fast can be dangerous to your company's health. Use the Sustainable Growth Rate ratio to track your company's financial ability to grow.

How Fast Is Too Fast?

(Originally published in Inc Magazine.) What typically tops the list of worries of the chief executive officers of fast growing companies? Financing that growth, according...

How to Smooth Data by Using the TREND Function

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Years ago, I read that Prof. William S. Cleveland had suggested that data could be smoothed by calculating a centered trendline through adjacent data—a...
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