Excel formulas

excel

beginner

Excel for beginners

Published

June 4, 2025

This session is part of our Excel for beginners course. That’s a series of six linked sessions, delivered on Teams, that give an introduction to Excel for people working in health and social care. The sessions are:

Together, they aim to help you develop an appropriate set of Excel skills to help your work. This session covers formulas in Excel:

for this session, you’ll need to be familiar with the Excel basics (getting around in Excel, opening/saving/closing files)
you’ll also need to be familiar with A1 referencing, values, and tables
we’re going to avoid talking about formatting as much as possible today
you might find the list of Excel shortcuts helpful too

Previous attendees have said…

21 previous attendees have left feedback
100% would recommend this session to a colleague
100% said that this session was pitched correctly

Three random comments from previous attendees

short sharp straight to the point
this was exactly what I needed as I had been playing about with formulas that I had found online to solve problems I was having, but I didn’t really understand them. This will help me feel more confident with playing about with my data.
Good session for an absolute beginner

Session materials

all materials
slides html / pdf
sample file .xlsx

Session outline

values and formulas
simple functions
references in formulas

Values and formulas

cells in Excel contain either values, or formulas
we’ll start with some data derived from NRS 2022 population estimates
make sure you have the sample data available

Values

when you enter some data in a cell, we call that a value
values look the same in their cell as in the formula bar

Formulas

we can also make a value using a formula
Excel evaluates/calculates the formula, then displays the result as a value
in an empty cell, try entering = 2 + 2

Example formulas

we can do ordinary arithmetic in formulas /, *, -, +…
you can also try & which joins values
- = "This number is " & 5

Functions

But most formulas use functions, which are like the verbs of Excel
Try = SUM(2, 2)

Adding functions

you can type functions in by name (as above)
you can also add from the Formulas area of the ribbon
or you can use the \(fx\) button by the formula bar

Function arguments

adding a function by \(fx\) or the menu brings up the Function Arguments interface
This is a helpful builder for more complicated functions

What are arguments?

arguments are the values we supply to a function
- in =SUM(2,3), the arguments are 2 and 3
we separate arguments with a comma ,
we need to be sure we’re supplying the right arguments in the right order (this gets described as the syntax of a function)
we also, while we’re on the jargon, say that functions return a value so = SUM(4,3) will return 7

Useful simple functions

in the same way as =SUM(), you can try:
- AVERAGE
- MIN and MAX
- SUBSTITUTE
- CEILING
- TODAY
- ROUND

References in formulas

mostly, you won’t add values directly into your formulas
instead, you’ll bring them in from another part of your spreadsheet
can you use SUM() to make a total Male + Female column in the supplied data?
- add a header in cell G2
- if needed, extend the table to include your new column
- in G3, enter the formula = SUM(C3, D3)
- then copy down the rows by double-clicking the green fill handle

Practice

calculate what proportion of your total population is under 16 (thanks, Lara Paterson (NHS Lanarkshire))
estimate the population density
find an average area for each council area

Troubleshooting functions

#NAME? = “I don’t recognise that function name”
#VALUE! = “Your syntax has gone wrong - usually in the wrong order”
#REF! = “I don’t recognise that reference”
#DIV/0! = “You’ve divided by zero”