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Functions

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Functional Skills check

Student task accompanies this slide Printable activity

This lesson will cover:

Basic spreadsheet functions.

Finding data using VLOOKUP.

Using the IF function and other logical operators.

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Functions

Spreadsheet software comes with a variety of different functions that can make it easy to process data efficiently.

What are functions and what do they do?

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Simple functions

Typing out a formula like

Functions also use the colon (:) to stand for all the cells in between two cells. So that

would eventually be tiresome, especially if lots more cellsneeded to be added into the equation.

To make this easier Excel has functions which will help makewriting formulae easier. For example:

Sum adds together a series of numbersAverage works out the average of a series of numbersMax works out the largest of a series of numbersMin works out the smallest of a series of numbers.

becomes

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Using functions

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To find out the ICT teacher, you would look down the Subject column until you found ICT, then across to

the Teacher column to find the teacher’s name.

Finding a record

VLOOKUP allows you to search through a table of information and find the relative value.

Like a database, the table has:field names – Subject, Teacher, Room records – each row is a different record. For example, the first record is ‘English Mrs Ridyard Room 6’.

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The computer does just the same. The function which is entered in cell B7 is as follows:

=VLOOKUP(A7,A2:C5,2,FALSE)

Vertical (i.e. column)

lookup (find)

Find the word in cell A7

Look between A2:C5

Take the value in

column 2

Find anexact match

VLOOKUP

– Mrs Spencer

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TRUE and FALSE

VLOOKUP(A7,A1:C5,2,FALSE),

In VLOOKUP, a TRUE value is used when searching for numbers and wanting to find the closest match. For example, you might look up the value ‘5’, but still want data returned where the value is ‘5.1’.

However, the previous example required an exact match of letters so FALSE would be used.

TRUE and FALSE are used in many formulae. They are logicalvalues like ‘1’ and ‘0’ or ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. The effect they have depends on how the formula is constructed.

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VLOOKUP

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Logical operators in spreadsheets

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More on the IF function

The IF function is one of the most commonly used functions as it allows you to create logical statements.

=IF(D1<26,100,200 )

If the cell D1 is less than 26 then return the value ‘100’ in the cell.If the cell D1 is greater than 26 then return the value ‘200’ in the cell.

Logical test Value if true Value if false

IF statements can be used to alert you when tolerances are breeched (e.g. going over budget) or they can be combined with other statements like COUNTIF.

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Functions

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Formulae in spreadsheets

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Correcting formulae and functions

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Revise those functions