In this video, we are going to learn how to use functions within a formula. The problem is that function formula sound very similar. So what is the difference? We've already said that a formula describes itself with the content is actually performing a calculation. A function is a predefined operation that can convert one or more input values into a particular output. So let's have a look at some simple examples.

Over here, we have a simple formula, which is nine to the power of point five, which is the same as the square root of none, which we all know is three. Now this is a simple formula that we could also use the function of square root and providing the input of nine to give us the result of an output value of three. So this example shows the difference between using a formula to actually perform the arithmetic and then you This predefined operation. Another simple example, is summing up all of these units sold by using all of them as inputs, together with the operators of addition. However, a much easier approach is to use the sum function. And as you can see, we've got some as the function.

And we've simply highlighted all of these numbers, which are the inputs that some requests, the output that it provides, is the addition of all of those numbers together. So hopefully, you can see that functions much easier to use, since they perform that predefined operation. And although this might seem quite trivial, they are not all as simple as arithmetic functions. They are in fact many different types of complex functions that we will come across. And let's have a look at one of those more obscure functions and we're going to use this to describe The structure of functions in general. And we're going to use three different elements, the inputs, or what Excel refers to as the function arguments, the order of those inputs, which is the syntax, and the notation of a function, which is the language we need to use to express that function so that Excel understands what to do using a text related function, which is called Fund.

The first thing you'll notice, it's asking us for three pieces of information. These are known as the function arguments. And without getting into the technical nature of this function, you can see that each of these arguments is separated by a comma. And that is an important point about the notation in which we have to provide these functions. And hopefully you notice that the first two arguments are different from the third. Do you notice that the third argument has square parentheses around it?

And then it's Excel telling us that in fact, that argument is only an optional argument, we could get the solution correctly by just providing these first two. The third is optional, and can modify the way that the function works. So let's have a look at this in action. If I type equals, if I in D, the first important thing to note is that to actually activate a function, you need to open up the initial parenthesis, holding down shift in none will then open up this view where we see the different arguments. So now we've learned two important parts around the notation is that we start a function off by opening up the parenthesis, we separate the different arguments using commas. Now, we see all of these different arguments.

This little tooltip is very helpful, because the bold text indicates that that is the current argument that we are on once we provide The information that this argument is requesting, we can press comma. And that separates these arguments. As you'll have noticed, the second argument is now bold, indicating that that is the current argument. And now to finish off a function, we can simply close off the parentheses, you'll have noticed a short little animation, which highlights both of those parentheses in bold, indicating that we've closed that off successfully. As we mentioned earlier, we don't need to provide that third argument since that is only optional. Without getting into the technical nature of the font function, we have now learned about the building blocks of a function being the different inputs, which are defined as arguments, the order that we have to provide those as well as the very important notation that we have to follow for Excel to understand what we are providing.

And you'll notice that there are hundreds of functions available. Strangely, they will appear on the Formulas tab of the ribbon. In the function library, you can see them categorized into things like math and trig, look up date and time, etc. Some of the very common ones that we use are the mathematical functions, some average count, but there are some really useful financial functions which we learn in Step five, statistical functions, functions to deal with date and time to clean up text, and several others. A complete list is provided below with links to the actual function, which will launch the Help menu. But over the rest of the series, we're going to learn how to use many of these common functions.

But hopefully, this has provided you with a simple approach to understanding Firstly, what a function is, how it works, and the structure of that function in an Excel language. We'll see in the next video