Excel Formulas and Functions - Tutorial for Beginners

About this video

Kevin explains Excel formulas versus functions using cookie sales data. A formula starts with an equals sign and uses numbers, cell references and operators. Typing =100+150 gives 250 but does not update when Monday’s sales change, whereas referencing cells (=B2+B3) recalculates dynamically. He covers subtraction (Tuesday minus Monday = 48 more cookies), multiplication with the asterisk (=B2*2 = 204) and division with the forward slash (Tuesday was 1.47 times Monday). For a whole week, adding cells one by one gets messy, so functions — built-in tools — help: =SUM over the range B2:B8 totals the week. He then demos AVERAGE (190 cookies per day), MAX (354, on Saturday), MIN (smallest day, Thursday), COUNT (7 values) and IF, which returns ‘Great job’ if Sunday sales exceed 300 and ‘You’re making too many YouTube videos’ otherwise — changing Sunday to 290 flips the result. The fx icon opens Function Arguments for guided entry, and the Formulas tab’s Function Library groups functions by category (financial, logical, text, date and time, and more) with hover descriptions. Finally, he contrasts relative references, which shift when a formula is copied (his pasted SUM returned 0), with absolute references using dollar signs before column and row, toggled with F4, which always pull from the original cells.

Key takeaways

• Formulas start with an equals sign; reference cells instead of typing values so results update automatically when the source data changes.
• Operators: + adds, - subtracts, * multiplies and / divides, as in Tuesday sales being 1.47 times Monday’s.
• Functions are built-in shortcuts — SUM totals a range such as B2:B8 instead of adding cells one by one; AVERAGE, MAX, MIN and COUNT handle other common jobs.
• IF applies logic with a test, a value if true and a value if false; the fx Function Arguments dialog walks you through each part.
• Relative references shift when copied; add dollar signs to make a reference absolute, pressing F4 to toggle the dollar signs.

Episode details: published June 9, 2025 · 11:43 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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