Page 98 - Excel Workbook for Dummies

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Chapter 5: Building Formulas 81

10. Restore 10% to cell B7 with Undo, position the cell cursor in cell C9, and click the
Insert Function button on the Formula bar.
11. Move the Insert Function dialog box to the right out of the way of the values
in your spreadsheet. Click SUM in the Select a Function list box before you
select OK.
12. Drag through the cell range A4:A8 to replace the default Number1 argument of
C4:C8 with this range.
Note how Excel automatically condenses the Function Arguments dialog box
down to just the text box for the Number1 argument as you drag through the cell
range and then immediately restores the dialog box the moment you release the
mouse button.
13. Press Tab or click the Number2 argument text box and then drag through the cell
range B4:B8 to select this range as the second to be included in the total.
Note that as soon as you select the Number2 argument text box, Excel adds a
Number3 text box to the Function Arguments dialog box.
14. Designate the cell range C4:C8 as the third argument in the Number3 argument
text box.
Note that the Function Arguments dialog box shows the subtotals of each of the
three ranges you’ve selected immediately following their respective argument
text boxes and that the Formula bar now contains the whole SUM formula ready
for insertion into cell C9:
=SUM(A4:A8,B4:B8,C4:C8)
15. Select OK to close the Function Arguments dialog box and enter the SUM formula
into cell C9.
16. Save your changes to the Practice Formulas.xls workbook file.

Editing formulas

Editing a formula, especially one that uses a function with multiple arguments, can
take a little getting used to. Fortunately, Excel makes formula editing within the cells
of the worksheet as easy as it can by isolating the ranges and displaying them in dif-
ferent color bounding boxes when you put the program in Edit mode.

The only problem comes when you’re dealing with a formula so complex and long
that its contents can’t be displayed within the worksheet display. Fortunately, on the
rare occasion when this occurs, you can still edit the formula on the Formula bar as it
automatically expands its rows to accommodate the extra length.

Try It

Exercise 5-5: Editing Formulas in the Spreadsheet
Use your Practice Formulas.xls workbook to get some experience with formula editing.
In this exercise, make changes to the SUM formula you previously constructed in cell
C9 that totals the three ranges A4:A8, B4:B8, and C4:C8:
1. Position the cell cursor in cell C9 and then press F2 to put Excel into Edit mode.
Excel responds by displaying the contents of the SUM formula in cell C9 of the
worksheet. The addresses of each of the cell ranges in the three arguments of
this SUM function appear in a different color and each of these colors corre-
sponds to that of the bounding box that encloses its cell range in the worksheet.