Advanced Excel: Formulas and Functions You Must Know

Introduction

In today’s technologically advanced world, almost every business & organization uses tools and software to run smoothly and efficiently. Among various other tools, Microsoft Advanced Excel is one of the most common and most used tools, with multiple features. An MBA or a PGDM graduate aspiring to start a career in the business management domain must learn this important skill.

For a business leader or a manager, Advanced Excel formulas & functions are the must-know features that allow you to analyze and streamline large sets of complex data into small and organized ones. If you own a business, leading a business unit, or working on your daily tasks related to managing data, Microsoft Excel guides you to manage sales reports, prepare financial budgets, manage balance sheets & other financial statements, analyze data for extracting information, and so much more. Understanding the most used Advanced Excel formulas will help you to make your data manipulation faster and more accurate.

In this blog, we are going to discuss the most in-demand advanced Excel formulas and functions that you must know as a business leader, manager, or entrepreneur.

List of Advanced Excel Formulas and Functions

Apart from basic features, there are Advanced Excel formulas and functions that might be helpful for your business or your job. Here are the list of Advanced Excel formulas and functions that include:

Advanced Functions of Advanced Excel

Pivot Table & Charts

Pivot tables & Charts in Microsoft Excel are powerful tools that help to analyze, explore, and summarize a large number of raw data sets. Using pivot tables will help you to analyze and explore data using filters, columns, rows, and values. It means you can easily analyze data, and calculate the key metrics like average, sum, and more. Pivot Tables and Charts in Advanced Excel are incredibly flexible features when it comes to data analysis, creating interactive dashboards, automatic updates, and accurate & efficient report generation.

Macros

Macros in Advanced Excel is another important feature that can automate repetitive, tedious, and complex tasks. To run Macros in Microsoft Excel you have to add a developer tab and then enable this feature to record your task. By clicking on the “Record Macro” option a window will pop up where you have to select a macro name and its shortcut buttons to run. Once it has been done with recording your complex task in any particular tab then you have to click on the stop recording button to stop this. After that you can run macros by clicking on the “Macros” option or else you can use the shortcut buttons to automate the same tasks on other tabs in the spreadsheet.

VLOOKUP

VLOOKUP is one of the most used functions of the Advanced Excel. It stands for vertical lookup where you can search for a specific value from a desired column across multiple sheets. Suppose you have raw data that contains various information. In this case, you want to know the specific value from any desired column from a different tab or sheet. Therefore you have to select the product name and then enter the VLOOKUP formula. In this case, you need to enter the formula “lookup value,” “table array,” and “code index number” and then select “true” for approx match or “false” for the exact match as per your requirement. Once you enter the formula properly you can see the value from a specific column that you wanted to know. In this way, you can search for the specific information in your spreadsheet.

Power Pivots

Power Pivot is another advanced function in Advanced Excel that allows users to perform powerful and complex data calculations. With power pivot, one can create sophisticated data models. It helps to combine data with several sources excel files, online services, and SQL databases. Also if you want to avoid using complex formulas for data analysis you can use power pivot to do the same. Power Pivot is essential for those who are working with big data or looking to create multidimensional reports.

Conditional Formatting

Conditional Formatting is one of the most used features in Microsoft Excel, and it allows users to apply formatting styles to large sets of data. Conditional Formatting has so many options such as highlight cell rules, top-bottom rules, clear rules, etc. With conditional formatting, you can arrange your data and optimize your calculations. Suppose you have a data set of various numbers and you want to know the number which is greater than any of the specific values. In this case, by clicking on the conditional formatting you will get an option to highlight cell rules. After that, you can get various options, from which you have to select the option “greater than..” and implement the exact value that you want to know. Here it will automatically highlight the greater value set with a specific color from that raw data set. In this way, you can optimize your calculations. Also, you can find duplicate values, and equal values, able to sort any value set, etc.

Advanced Formulas of Advanced Excel

INDEX & MATCH

Index and Match are the two formulas in Excel that help to find the exact value at a given location in a range of cells. Suppose you want to retrieve the location in a one-dimensional range then you just need to implement the row number in the given formula that is “array,” “row_num,” and “column_num.”. Meanwhile, in the two-dimensional range, you need to implement both the row and column numbers to get the exact location in the same formula.

The match function in Microsoft Excel guides you to get the exact position of any particular item in a horizontal or vertical range of cells. Here the formula is “lookup value,” “lookup_array,” and “match type”. In match type, you will be getting three options such as “greater than (1),” “exact match (0),” and “less than (-1).” In this case, the value you are looking for will need to implement the number accordingly.

CONCATENATE

The word Concatenate in Excel helps to join or merge values from various cells into one cell. Suppose you have entered a name in column A and column B and then you have merged by applying a concatenate formula and making a new name into a new cell. In the current version of Excel, you can use the CONCAT formula rather than CONCATENATE. Also if you want to add space, punctuation, or any other details then you need to instruct CONCATENATE to implement this.

TRIM

TRIM is another formula in Microsoft Excel that helps to remove the extra space from the text. TRIM formula in Excel is very simple where you just have to enter the cell number with “TRIM” and then able to remove the space or any other space-related issue. It removes all leading, following, and in-between spaces except for a single/common space between words.

LEN

LEN is an in-built data processing formula that saves time while working in a spreadsheet. The formula LEN has been used in Microsoft Excel to format, clean, and analyze data. In case you want to know the length of the text then you need to apply the formula “=LEN(text).” On the other side if you want to trim the desired text from any specific number of characters then you have to apply the formula “=RIGHT(text,[num-chars]-(the characters number which you want to trim).”

PV FUNCTION

PV function which is known as the Present Value formula in Microsoft Excel. This formula is widely been used for financial functions in Microsoft Excel. PV is mainly used to calculate the financial value of any future payments at present. The formula of PV is “PV(rate,nper,pmt,[fv],[type]).”

SUMIF

SUMIF formula in Microsoft Excel to sum the values that meet the criteria that you specify. In this case, the SUMIF formula is “=SUMIF(range, criteria, [sum_range]).” This formula is mainly used to sum the values in a column.

COUNTA

The COUNTA formula in Microsoft Excel is mainly been used to count the number of cells in a specific range. It includes multiple types of data such as numbers, letters, spaces, values, errors, and empty text. With this formula, users can also count times, dates, strings, errors, empty strings, logical values, and so much more.

Conclusion

Advanced Excel formulas and functions are useful and essential tools for business management professionals who want to perform important data analysis as part of their jobs. Understanding the functions and formulas of Advanced Excel will help you to save time. Even working on a large sheet with a vast range of data, formulas, and functions will make your data analysis work more efficient & easier. Functions like conditional formatting or Match and Index improve the accuracy and efficiency of your work. By leveraging Advanced Excel techniques one can run an automated task function which is a macro.

So, if you are pursuing a PGDM or an MBA program from one of the top MBA colleges in India, you must learn Advanced Excel. Learning this important skill will improve your productivity and streamline data analysis. To get meaningful insights and make more informed decisions, using advanced formulas and functions will help you to do so in your large set of data. Whether in marketing, finance, HR, or any other field, having proficiency in Advanced Excel empowers MBA graduates to work smarter and faster in their careers. To learn more about how PIBM, one of the top B-Schools in India, provides specialized training on Advanced Excel, please click here.