Most Common Excel Formulas - Excel at Your Job

Discover the most common Excel formulas—including lookups, if statements, average if, and count if—plus foundational techniques like trim, concatenate, left, right, mid, data validation, and conditional formatting.

Outline what we will not cover, including basic Excel formulas, simple formatting, moving and scrolling in Excel, and adding a new sheet, with openness to add if needed.

Download the common formulas workbook and learn to apply lookup, left, right, and mid in Excel or Google Sheets, guided by a hyperlinked table of contents.

Learn how to use vlookup in Excel or Google Sheets to find an item in a list and return an attribute, using exact match, dynamic references, and absolute cell locking.

Learn how to use if statements to return values based on a condition, and build dynamic, locked-cell formulas that identify items as expensive or affordable.

Learn to use the sumif formula to sum donations by name with a dynamic range and criteria, and drag and lock cells for real-world efficiency.

Learn how to use the averageif formula to compute conditional averages, build dynamic ranges, and lock criteria, illustrated with donation examples for John, Kim, and Rachel.

Explore how to use countif to tally how many times a person donated, using dynamic ranges, fixed criteria, and a responsive data table.

Learn how the trim function removes leading spaces to clean data, enabling accurate formulas and sums in Excel, with practical examples using names like Bob and John.

Create a unique identifier by concatenating name and city, then use that key to run formulas and isolate Bob from New York while excluding Bob from San Diego.

Learn how to use left, right, and mid formulas in Excel to extract account codes and locations from strings, and analyze spend with sums and percentages.

Learn to nest two formulas into one cell to extract a location and convert it to a city name, using if logic to show Houston or Austin.

Learn to enforce data integrity in Excel by using data validation to restrict input with lists, numbers, dates, times, and custom rules, including drop-downs and custom input messages.

Remove duplicates to get unique cities from donation data. Use sum if to total donations per city across the chosen range.

Master conditional formatting and data filters to automatically highlight transactions over 50 and quickly sift results, reducing manual work and boosting accuracy.

Master core Excel formulas such as averages, count if, trim, concatenate, and nested formulas to build a strong foundation for data validation, removing duplicates, and conditional formatting.