How to Insert Functions into Spreadsheets in Excel 2013

Excel is a multi-featured worksheet program in which you can create powerful worksheets that can manipulate numbers for you. It is a very powerful program, and has many advanced features that can automate and simplify your work. Whether you want it to create charts, worksheets, or data sources, Excel can assist you in accomplishing your tasks quickly and easily. In this post, we will discuss how to insert functions into spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel 2013. 

1. Click the “Insert Function” button in the “Function Library” group on the “Formulas” tab in the Ribbon, 

or click the “fx” (function) button in the Formula Bar. Either of these will launch the “Insert Function” dialog box.

2. In the “Insert Function” dialog box, search for a function by typing a few words that describe what you want to do into the “Search for a function:” text box and then clicking the “Go” button.

3. Or, use the “Or select a category:” drop-down to select a category of functions to inspect for the one that you want to use. If you select the “All” category, you will see an alphabetized listing of all of Excel’s functions in the “Select a function:” text box. You can click on the function that you want to investigate to see a description of its function and syntax in the area below that.

4. Select the function, then click the “OK” button to open the “Function Arguments” dialog box, (which is where you will complete the formula).

5. In the “Function Arguments” dialog box, click the small red, white, and blue “Collapse/Expand Dialog Box” button at the right end of any argument shown in the dialog box to collapse the “Function Arguments” dialog box down to a single line. This will give you room to select the cell or range of cells in the worksheet that you want to use for the argument’s reference.

6. Simply click and drag over the cell, cell range, or cell ranges that you need to select to complete the selected argument. Then click the small red, white, and blue “Collapse/Expand Dialog Box” button again to expand the “Function Arguments” dialog box back to its full size. You can repeat this process until you have entered all of the required arguments for your selected function.

7. Once you have entered all of the required arguments, click the “OK” button in the “Function Arguments” dialog box to insert the function into your worksheet.