Finding Excel Functions by Online Search

Obviously you need to know the Excel name for the relevant Excel function, most commonly used functions have intuitive names (sum, average, count, etc….) and for the more specialized or complicated functions there is a way to search Excel for the proper syntax, we will cover this issue later in the semester.

Excel is such a popular tool you can also use an internet search engine to find if an Excel function exists for a particular task. For instance if I wanted the Excel formula for calculating the periodic payment in a constant payment amortized loan I would go to a search engine and type in: Excel loan constant payment. In this example the correct function would be the PMT function which we will look at later in the semester.