Exploring database functions

There are twelve database functions in Excel that cover most of the clusters of functions. These functions have been in the Excel library for many years, and are often forgotten about or not known, as there are so many other functions we can use today.

Database functions are a substitute for IFS functions (explained in a previous topic) and are definitely more powerful in application.

There is one action you need to take prior to constructing a formula using database functions: Make sure that your dataset is formatted as a tabular table. Each column in the dataset needs to have a column header.

Learning database function syntax

The syntax for database functions is really simple and is the same for each type of database function you construct. We will look at a few database functions in this topic, so let's look at the DGET database function as an example. The DGET function returns only one matching record. If it locates more than one match...