Microsoft Office

Part II
Working with Formulas and Functions
FIGURE 17.14
The goal is to count the number of characters in a range of text.
The array formula uses the LEN function to create a new array (in memory) that consists of the number of
characters in each cell of the range. In this case, the new array is
{10,9,8,5,6,5,5,10,11,14,6,8,8,7}
The array formula is then reduced to:
=SUM({10,9,8,5,6,5,5,10,11,14,6,8,8,7})
The formula returns the sum of the array elements, 112.
Summing the three smallest values in a range
If you have values in a range named Data, you can determine the smallest value by using the SMALL function:
=SMALL(Data,1)
You can determine the second smallest and third smallest values by using these formulas:
=SMALL(Data,2)
=SMALL(Data,3)
To add the three smallest values, you could use a formula like this:
=SUM(SMALL(Data,1), SMALL(Data,2), SMALL(Data,3)
This formula works fine, but using an array formula is more efficient. The following array formula returns
the sum of the three smallest values in a range named Data:
{=SUM(SMALL(Data,{1,2,3}))}
The formula uses an array constant as the second argument for the SMALL function. This generates a new
array, which consists of the three smallest values in the range. This array is then passed to the SUM function,
which returns the sum of the values in the new array.
328