Page 329 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

into the worksheet, chances are good that when you click the Recently Used command button, that function will be listed on its drop-down menu for you to select.
When you click OK after selecting the function that you want to use in the current cell, Excel inserts the function name followed by a closed set of parentheses on the Formula bar. At the same time, the program closes the Insert Function dialog box and then opens the Function Arguments dialog box, similar to the one shown in Figure 1-5. You then use the argument text box or boxes displayed in the Function Arguments dialog box to specify what numbers and other information are to be used when the function calcu- lates its result.
All functions — even those that don’t take any arguments, such as the TODAY function — follow the function name by a closed set of parentheses, as in =TODAY(). If the function requires arguments (and almost all require at least one), these arguments must appear within the parentheses following the function name. When a function requires multiple arguments, such as the DATE function, the various arguments are entered in the required order (as in year, month, day for the DATE function) within the parentheses separated by commas, as in DATE(33,7,23).
Figure 1-5:
Selecting the arguments for a function in the Function Arguments dialog box.
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When you use the text boxes in the Function Arguments dialog box to
input the arguments for a function, you can select the cell or cell range in the worksheet that contains the entries that you want used. Click the text box for the argument that you want to define and then either start drag- ging the cell cursor through the cells or, if the Function Arguments dialog box is obscuring the first cell in the range that you want to select, click the Collapse Dialog Box button located to the immediate right of the text box. Dragging or clicking this button reduces the Function Arguments dialog box to just the currently selected argument text box, thus enabling you to drag through the rest of the cells in the range.
Book III Chapter 1
Building Basic Formulas