Welcome to Excelling with Excel

More Basics
when you finish this page, you are ready to explore cut, copy, paste and delete.

The paste function dialog box is also used to create formulas. Excel users use the paste function dialog box for formulas and when they find it quicker to type the formula in they do that. This comes with experience.

The key is to know that the paste function dialog box is there and when you click on the function icon, the FX, a paste function dialog box appears. Tthe first item in the dialog box is most recently used. This is wonderful becasue if you use certain formulas over and over again, you can select the formula from the list of most recently used.

The paste function dialog box can be found by clicking on the icon OR from the INSERT menu - function. When the paste function dialog appears you will see a list of the many things that Excel can do. The left hand side of the box shows the function category and the right hand side shows the function name.

What will be challenging for awhile is where is the function I need. Example: average, min and max are found under the statistical category. Sum is found under math and trig. Beware, you will see a subtotal listing under math and trig, that is used in lists and databases and not when you want a subtotal with numbers.

Take some time to explore the various categories. You will be amazed at the power of Excel.

Now to do a problem using the fx or paste function dialog box.

• Open a new workbook and in cell A5 type the word average
• In cells B1:B4 (remember this means cells B1-B4), type these numbers: 14, 8, 22, 6
• Click on cell B5 - this is where we want our answer to appear
• Click on the fx icon OR use the Insert menu-function
• Go to statistical (left hand side of the paste function dialog box)
• Select average and click OK
• Yippee - at the next dialog box Excel has selected the cells it thinks you want to average
• AND, if you look carefully you will see the formula result in this dialog box
• Click OK
• Look at your spreadsheet, the average is there and if you click on cell B5, you will see the same formula we typed the last time we did this.
• And, for some fun, to see the magic of Excel, change any of the numbers in cells B1 through B4 and watch Excel change the average

Repeat this for Min and Max
Use the fx icon, select statistical and select Min and then Max and see if you can do the formulas using the paste function dialog box.

• Type Min in cell A6 and Max in cell A7
• Now, select cell B6 and use paste function for min
• Select cell B7 and use the paste function for ma

BUT, what if the numbers you wanted to average or do another function with were not next to each other? What do you do?

Let's use the average example above and the average function (use fx and select average from the statistical category).

• when the function dialog box appears, you see number 1, number 2 - just click on the cells you want to average.
• example: number 1 click on cell B1(by doing this it will over-ride the cells Excel thought you wanted to average, in the number 2 dialog area, click on cell B4 and then OK.
• Excel has done an average of the numbers you want to average.
• now you see that you can use the function dialog box do what you want it to do :-)

And now onto cut, copy, paste and delete.

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