Another extremely useful Excel function is the AVERAGE function. As I’m sure you can guess, this function will return the average of the values in the cells that you pass into it.

Here is the example I’ll use:

Using this example, here’s the usage for this function:

• AVERAGE(A1,A2) - This will return the average of the values in cells A1 and A2. The returned value would be 13.5.

• AVERAGE(A1,A2,5) - This will return the average of the values in cells A1 and A2, and the number “5″. The returned value would be approximately 10.7.

• AVERAGE(A1:A4) - This will return the average of the values in the range of cells between and including A1 and A4. The returned value would be 12. You’ll see that there is no value in cell A3. That’s ok, because the AVERAGE function will ignore this and just calculate the average based on the populated cells. This is also true any time that a cell in a given range would have a non-numeric value, such as text.

• AVERAGE(A1:A4,5) - This will return the average of the values in the range of cells between and including A1 and A4, and the number “5″. The returned value would be 10.25.

I find the AVERAGE function is nice to use when you don’t know exactly how many cells in a range you’ll want to average (as in the case of possible empty cells, etc.). It’s also convenient when you don’t want to type long formulas with a ton of cell references, and then manually figure out the denominator. I use it on a pretty regular basis, and it saves me a good amount of time and cuts down on the mistakes that manual calculations can cause.