The “Function Wizard”

In the previous lesson, you learned how to manually enter functions. But if you are unsure about how to enter a particular function, what the correct function is for a certain problem, or how to make changes to a function, you can use the ‘Function Wizard”.

Click on the button “Insert Function” (1) beside the “Formula bar”. This opens the “Insert Function” (2) dialog box.

In the upper section of the dialog we can enter a keyword search or we can type a short description of what we want to do (3). In the middle section, all functions which “Excel” found relevant to our search criteria are displayed (4).

If you select a function then its definition will be displayed (5).

In below example, I will calculate the payment on a loan, so I type loan in the “Search box” and click the “Search” button.
As soon as I click the “Search” button , Excel shows me some possibilities. You can select the one which agrees with what you want to do. For this example, the “PMT function seems to be the best choice for me.

So I select the “PMT” and click the OK button.

This will open the second dialog box where I need to enter a number of arguments.
The number of arguments always depend on the selected function.

Only the arguments in bold displayed in the dialog box are mandatory, the others are optional.

 

In the first box, I give the interest. This we divide by twelve because this is an annual interest, and we want to know the monthly payments. The interest is in box C4, so that will be C4/12

In the second section we give the number of periods for the loan which is 3 years, so 36 months is entered in cell C6.

And in the third box, we enter the principal amount borrowed. This is displayed in cell C3.
The two boxes below are optional, so we need not fill in anything here.
The result is already shown on the lower left dialog (1).

If you want to select the cells from the “Worksheet” instead of manually entering them, click the “Folding” (2) button beside the appropriate box. If you have selected the cell, click the “Open” (3) button to return to the dialog box.

After all arguments are entered, click the OK button. The result will be displayed immediately.

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