10 Must-Know Excel Formulas for Beginners

New to Excel? Master these 10 formulas to handle 80% of your daily work — from SUM to VLOOKUP.

Starting with Excel and feeling overwhelmed by all the menus? You really only need about 10 formulas for 80% of daily work. Master these and you'll be way ahead. 1. SUM — Add Numbers =SUM(A1:A10) Add up a range of numbers. Use for: monthly totals, expense reports. 2. AVERAGE — Calculate Mean =AVERAGE(B1:B20) Use for: average scores, average sales figures. 3. IF — Conditional Logic =IF(A1>=60, "Pass", "Fail") Use for: grading, inventory alerts, target tracking. 4. VLOOKUP — Vertical Lookup =VLOOKUP("Product A", A:D, 3, FALSE) Use for: finding prices, employee info, order details. 5. COUNTIF — Conditional Count =COUNTIF(C:C, "Done") Use for: counting completed tasks, specific product sales. 6. CONCATENATE / & — Join Text =A1 & " " & B1 Use for: combining names, building addresses. 7. LEFT / RIGHT / MID — Extract Text =LEFT(A1, 3) =RIGHT(A1, 4) =MID(A1, 2, 5) Use for: extracting ID numbers, order code parsing. 8. SUMIF — Conditional Sum =SUMIF(A:A, "Tokyo", B:B) Use for: regional sales totals, department expenses. 9. TEXT — Format Numbers =TEXT(A1, "yyyy/mm/dd") Use for: standardizing dates, generating report IDs. 10. IFERROR — Handle Errors =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A1, B:C, 2, FALSE), "Not found") Use for: clean reports, preventing formula error cascades. Want to Learn More? These 10 formulas are just the start! Our Excel 50 Most-Used Features Guide covers everything from basics to pivot tables — with shortcuts and step-by-step instructions. Just US$3 per book. Instant download, lifetime access.