The powerful Excel calculation tool is one of the most popular due to its great versatility, you will be able to calculate internal rate of return , basic and advanced calculations in various areas, as well as other tasks of a diverse nature. To get to perform advanced calculations, you need to know how to do the most basic calculations such as subtracting amounts and ranges in Excel . Continue reading and we’ll show you.
Index( )
- What are the most popular and useful calculation tools in Excel?
- sums
- multiplications
- Calculation of percentages as VAT
- square and cube root
- How do I subtract a number from my cell in an Excel document?
- How can I subtract numbers from a range in an Excel sheet?
What are the most popular and useful calculation tools in Excel?
As we have already mentioned, you will be able to execute many calculations in Excel, depending on your taste, you will have tools to do it manually or through the use of formulas or functions in Excel . Here we show you the most popular tools that you will find in this software:
sums
You will achieve this basic mathematical operation in Excel in two possible ways, the first of which is by clicking on a specific cell and placing the “=” sign to then choose the cells that you will add. For example, suppose you want to sum cells “A1”, “B1” and “C1”, and want to display the result in cell “D1”; you must place in the last cell “=A1+B1+C1” .
You must take into account that the previous method will be easy to carry out if you have few amounts to add , on the contrary if you have a wide range of cells that you want or need to add, it will not be easy to execute. To do this, we recommend using the “=sum()” function, where you must place the range or cells to be added in parentheses.
To solve the previous example using the sum function, you must place in cell “D1” the following expression “=sum(A1:C1)”. The colon tells Excel to take into account the range of cells from “A1” to “C1″, if you want to add a range of cells and another range of cells that is separate from the first use the expression like this ” =sum(A1:C1; A5:C5)”.
You are telling Excel with this expression that you want to add the values of “A1”, “B1”, “C1” and the values of “A5”, “B5” and “C5”, as you will notice it simplifies the process to perform the calculation of sum of the 6 numbers or quantities.
multiplications
To multiply quantities in Excel you need to use the “*” operator instead of the classic “x”, in this way the program’s algorithm will understand that you are requesting to multiply the quantities or numbers that you indicate according to the cells that you choose. In principle it is easy to execute the operation, you just have to place “=” and the cells to multiply with the appropriate operator.
For example, let’s multiply the cells “B1” and “C1”, for this we must place the expression “=B1*C1” in the destination cell “D1” , as you will see it is easy to use this method. However, if you need to perform this calculation over a wide range of values, it will become tedious; in this case we recommend using the “=Product()” function.
In a similar way to what happens with the sum function, the product formula is used to operate the multiplication on several values indicated in parentheses. If you want to multiply, for example, the cells from “A1” to “C1”, you must place the expression “=product(A1:C1)” in the destination cell. The same happens with non-consecutive values, example “=product(A1:C1;A5:C5)”.
Calculation of percentages as VAT
One of the most common applications is the use of the spreadsheet to obtain the percentage of VAT on a product or service, for this you must first determine the percentage to which the economic activity is subject and then execute the calculation. Suppose you have an invoice that is subject to 21% VAT and the tax base is 100 Euros, then the VAT will be 21 Euros.
To obtain this value in Excel you must place the amount of the VAT value in a cell next to the “%” symbol , that is, in cell “B3” we place “21%” and then in cell “A3” we place the tax base . We show the result in cell “D3” by placing “=A3*B3”. For more information, you can visit Microsoft excel support to learn how to format numbers.
square and cube root
You can obtain the square root function in Excel directly by applying the expression “=Raiz()” on the cell you want to calculate, you already know that you must place the cell inside the parentheses of the function. If we apply the square root to the number in cell “A4” and display the result in cell “D4”, you would put “=sqrt(A4)”.
The calculation of the cube root must be done thinking about the mathematical representation of this expression, you already know that the cube root of a number is represented as a power. That is why you must place the cell that contains the number and raise it with the operator “^” to “1/3” , so for example if you want to determine the cube root of cell “A4” and display it in “E4” you must place “=A4^(1/3)”.
How do I subtract a number from my cell in an Excel document?
To perform this operation you have two options, the first is to select the cell and subtract a fixed number , for example, “=A1-10” this expression indicates that the result of the destination cell will have the value contained in the cell “A1” minus 10 units. The second way is to subtract the values contained in cells, so changing the values in the cells will change the result.
If you take “=A1-B1” the result will be the subtraction of both values contained in said cells, with which you will have the possibility of having non-fixed values that you can change whenever you want.
How can I subtract numbers from a range in an Excel sheet?
To subtract values located in ranges, the best way to do it is using the sum function, that is, if you want to subtract two ranges of values you can use “=sum(A1:C1)-sum(A2:C2)”, so you will be adding the values from A1 to C1 and then subtracting the result of the sum from A2 to C2.
In general, Excel is a very complete tool that will allow you to perform easy and complex calculations using the functions mentioned above and others such as the average function that is very useful in various tasks.