While Microsoft Excel offers a wide range of functions, there are a few that often go unnoticed or are underutilized. Here are some of the most underrated Excel functions:
- CONCATENATE: This function allows you to combine text strings from different cells into a single cell. It can be useful for merging names, addresses, or any other textual data.
- TEXT: The TEXT function allows you to format a value or date in a specific way. It’s handy for customizing the display of numbers, dates, and times.
- NETWORKDAYS: This function calculates the number of working days between two dates, excluding weekends and optionally specified holidays. It’s useful for calculating project durations or tracking deadlines.
- TRANSPOSE: The TRANSPOSE function allows you to convert a vertical range of cells into a horizontal range, or vice versa. It can be helpful when reorganizing data or creating different views of the same information.
- VLOOKUP: While VLOOKUP is relatively well-known, it’s worth mentioning as an underrated function due to its powerful data lookup capabilities. It searches for a value in the leftmost column of a table and returns a corresponding value from a specified column. It’s commonly used for data retrieval and merging tables.
- AGGREGATE: The AGGREGATE function performs calculations on a range of data and provides flexible options, such as ignoring error values or hidden rows. It can be used to calculate various statistical measures, including averages, medians, maximums, minimums, and more.
- RAND: The RAND function generates a random decimal number between 0 and 1. It’s useful for simulating scenarios or generating random data sets.
- INDIRECT: The INDIRECT function allows you to reference a cell or range indirectly by using text strings as references. It enables dynamic referencing and can be helpful for creating flexible formulas.
- IFERROR: The IFERROR function checks if a formula results in an error and allows you to specify an alternative value or action to take when an error occurs. It helps prevent error messages from appearing in your worksheet and provides better control over error handling.
- SUBTOTAL: The SUBTOTAL function performs various calculations, such as sums, averages, counts, and more, on a range of data, while providing options to ignore hidden rows or nested subtotals. It’s especially useful when working with filtered or organized data sets.
These functions may not receive as much attention as some of the commonly used ones like SUM or COUNT, but they can be incredibly powerful and save you time when working with data in Excel.