You don’t need to construct a formula to determine certain measures, like an average, in Excel. Read on to learn a quicker way.
Problem: Your manager calls on the telephone and asks for the average price of a particular product. You need to quickly find an average of the prices in Fig. 245. Is there a faster way than entering a formula?
Note: Click any figure for a larger view of that image.
Strategy: The QuickSum feature in the status bar can be customized to show Average, Min, Max, Count, or Count Numbers. Highlight a range of numbers. Look for the QuickSum value in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
As shown in Fig. 246, right-click the QuickSum and a menu pops up allowing you to choose Average, Count, Count Numbers, Max, Min, or Sum. Select Average.
Result: The QuickSum changes to show an average, as shown in Fig. 247. Nice and easy!
Additional Information: Excel will remember the setting of the QuickSum area from session to session. If you change from Sum to Average, it will continue to show averages of the selected cells until you change this back to a Sum. Count will count all non-blank cells in the selection. Count Nums will only count cells that contain numeric or date values.
Summary: You can quickly find the average, count, min, or max of a range by using the right-click menu to customize the QuickSum information in the status bar.
Commands Discussed: Status Bar – QuickSum
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References and Additional Resources
If you’re looking for more tips and tutorials, check out 91 Tips for Calculating With Microsoft Excel . This collection of easy-to-follow guides shows how to customize charts and graphs, different ways to make complex spreadsheets easier to update, and even how to play games like Craps in Excel.
Other Resources:
Microsoft Excel Official Site, https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/
Bill Jelen, Microsoft Excel 2010 In Depth, Available from Amazon.com .
