Some only use about five Excel functions forever. SUM. AVERAGE. Maybe COUNT if they’re feeling adventurous.
Excel is capable of saving people hours of work if they learn a few less obvious functions.
Here are 10 Excel functions that are way more useful than people realize, especially if you deal with training records, employee lists, reports, inventory, survey data, or giant spreadsheets nobody wants to clean up manually.
10. PROPER
If you’ve ever received a spreadsheet where every name is typed in ALL CAPS like an angry email subject line (or all lower case), PROPER is your best friend.
=PROPER(A1)
It automatically changes text to proper capitalization. “JOHN SMITH” becomes “John Smith.” Great for cleaning up employee lists, registration forms, or imported data without manually fixing every row one at a time.
9. TEXTJOIN
This one combines information from multiple cells into one cleaner sentence or field.
=TEXTJOIN(" - ",TRUE,A1:C1)
You can combine names, departments, dates, or locations into readable formats fast. Super useful when exporting data into reports, certificates, emails, or labels.
8. IFERROR
One of the best “make the spreadsheet look less broken” functions.
=IFERROR(A1/B1,"")
Instead of giant ugly error messages everywhere, you can replace errors with blank spaces, custom messages, or cleaner outputs. Makes dashboards and reports look way more professional instantly.
7. CONCAT
This is another text combining function, but simpler than TEXTJOIN. Great when you need to quickly combine first names and last names or create usernames, IDs, or email addresses.
=CONCAT(A1," ",B1)
Tiny function. Huge time saver.
6. FILTER
FILTER is amazing when you want Excel to automatically pull matching information into another area without manually sorting or deleting rows, much like a mini spreadsheet on the side.
=FILTER(A2:D100,D2:D100="Completed")
Now suddenly you have a live updating list of only completed items, only overdue tasks, only one department, or whatever else you want. This used to require way more complicated spreadsheet tricks.
5. SORT
People still manually sort giant spreadsheets constantly instead of using SORT dynamically.
=SORT(A2:D100,2,1)
You can instantly create automatically sorted views by name, score, department, completion date, or almost anything else. Especially useful for dashboards that constantly update.
4. UNIQUE
This one feels like magic the first time people use it.
=UNIQUE(A2:A100)
It instantly removes duplicates and creates a clean list. Perfect for pulling unique employee names, departments, course titles, locations, or survey responses from giant messy spreadsheets. (HINT: mix this with a SORT function to make a quick report of everything in one column in alphabetical order.)
3. SUMIF
SUMIF quietly saves people from making terrible manual calculations.
=SUMIF(A:A,"Sales",B:B)
You can total only specific categories automatically. Add only one department’s budget, only completed training hours, only one project’s expenses, or only one month’s totals without filtering manually every time. (HINT: mix this with SORT and UNIQUE to make a report of instant subtotals.)
2. XLOOKUP (and VLOOKUP too)
Most people know VLOOKUP exists but never fully understand how powerful lookup functions are.
=VLOOKUP(A2,D:G,3,FALSE)
or the newer and better:
=XLOOKUP(A2,D:D,F:F)
These functions let Excel automatically find matching information somewhere else in your spreadsheet. Employee IDs pulling names. Product codes pulling prices. Training records pulling completion statuses.
1. INDEX + MATCH
This is the function combo spreadsheet people eventually graduate into after realizing VLOOKUP has limitations.
=INDEX(C:C,MATCH(A2,A:A,0))
It’s more flexible, more powerful, and handles complicated spreadsheets much better. Large organizations use this kind of function combination constantly for reports, databases, dashboards, and automation. It looks scary at first, but once it clicks, people start wondering how they ever survived without it.
The funny part about Excel is that a lot of people think they’re bad at spreadsheets, but usually nobody ever showed them the functions that actually save them time. A few good function can eliminate hours of repetitive work and make spreadsheets feel less like punishment and more like actual tools.
