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164 Part II: Using Formulas and Functions

12. Click the Sort Ascending button on the Standard toolbar again and then, if a Sort
Warning dialog box appears, select the Continue with the Current Selection
option button before you click its Sort button.
Note how, at the time you use the Sort Ascending button, Excel rearranges the
text in the cell selection.
13. Click the Sort Descending button on the Standard toolbar (the one with the Z
over the A followed by a downward pointing arrow). Select the Continue with
the Current Selection option button before you select the Sort button if a Sort
Warning dialog box appears.

This time, Excel arranges the addresses in descending order (following the street
number — for more on how Excel sorts values, see Chapter 16).
14. Position the cell cursor in cell A1 and then save your work with the filename
Solved13-1.xls in your Chapter 13 folder in the My Practice Spreadsheets folder
and leave the workbook open as you will need it to complete Exercise 13-2.

Using Text Functions

Excel’s Text functions offer a wide variety of methods for searching and manipulating
text entries in a spreadsheet. These functions include the CONCATENATE function for
joining together strings of text (specified as its text arguments) — just like the & (amper-
sand) operator in the handmade formulas you constructed in Exercise 13-1 — and, per-
haps even more useful to most, the UPPER, LOWER, and PROPER functions for changing
the capitalization of text entries in the spreadsheet. (Most of the other Text functions are
seldom required outside of macros and specialized VBA programming applications.)

Figure 13-1 shows you an example of a spreadsheet that is in desperate need of the
PROPER function, which changes the case of the text specified as its sole argument to
Title case, where only the first letter in each word is uppercase.

Figure 13-1:
Client List
spreadsheet
with the
names in
all capital
letters.