Overview

Formulas and functions are the backbone of Excel and provide a powerful
and robust way to manage data and calculations inside of the workbooks.
While you were able to get some initial exposure to these features in the
prior week, this week will allow you to see and use additional functions
beyond the SUM function. There is also a feature called Conditional
Formatting that will allow you to set different formatting automatically to
a range of cells based on different characteristics of those cells that you
predefine.

MIN and MAX

Some of the functions and formulas you will learn about this week include
the MIN, MAX, and MEDIAN functions. These are useful to determine
different values from a range of cells, without having to locate these
values manually. For example, as noted in the textbook, the MIN
function determines the smallest value in a selected range of values,
whereas the MAX function determines the largest value in a selected
range of values.

Conditional Formatting
Formulas and functions are the backbone of Excel and provide a powerful
and robust way to manage data and calculations inside of the workbooks.
While you were able to get some initial exposure to these features in the
prior week, this week will allow you to see and use additional functions
beyond the SUM function. There is also a feature called Conditional
Formatting that will allow you to set different formatting automatically to
a range of cells based on different characteristics of those cells that you
predefine.
Some of the functions and formulas you will learn about this week include
the MIN, MAX, and MEDIAN functions. These are useful to determine
different values from a range of cells, without having to locate these
values manually. For example, as noted in the textbook, the MIN
function determines the smallest value in a selected range of values,
whereas the MAX function determines the largest value in a selected
range of values.
You will have a chance to try these features out as you go through this
weeks reading, as well as a chance to see how Conditional Formatting
works. As defined in the textbook, a conditional format changes the
appearance of a cell based on a condition. For example, you can configure
a conditional formatting rule that change the font color to red for any cell
in which a particular value or word is present. This can be quite dynamic

since you could have a spreadsheet where cell values and text change
frequently. Thus, whenever the values in those cells change, these
conditional formatting rules apply automatically and make it easier to
highlight these particular items.
A real world example of where you might want to use conditional
formatting could be for inventory purposes. Perhaps you had a list of all
of your inventory with a quantity in stock column. If you wanted to have
a quick way to see any time an item had 5 or less in stock, you could set a
conditional formatting rule that highlights that item in red, whenever the
quantity value for that item dropped to 5 or less. It would change
automatically, then change back to normal whenever the value falls out of
this range. Be sure to review the content that begins on page 427 of your
textbook to get started with conditional formatting and to get an idea of
how it can be put to use.