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Cool INDEX Function Trick

You are here: Home / Excel Formulas / Cool INDEX Function Trick
Cool INDEX Function Trick
November 23, 2011 by Mynda Treacy


Index FunctionWhat say you want to find the percentage increase or decrease for the last value in a list compared to the minimum?

Sure you could do it the manual way, but I’m going to show you a way you can update the calculation automatically each time a new value is added to the bottom using the INDEX Function.

Taking this list we can use the formula below to find the last value in column B and divide it by the minimum value in the list:

=INDEX(B:B,COUNT(B:B)+2)/MIN(B:B)-1

How The Formula Above Works

Index Function Trick

Alternatively we could find the percentage change from the starting value of 51 compared to the last value in the list like this:

=INDEX(B:B,COUNTA(B:B)+2)/$B$4-1

How The Formula Above Works

Index Function Trick

As usual there are many ways you could achieve these calculations but one of the benefits of using the INDEX function is that it is non-volatile.

Non-what?

That's non-volatile. A volatile function is recalculated every time any data in your workbook changes.

This can render your workbook very slow to recalculate and best practice is to avoid volatile functions where possible.

Some common volatile functions are OFFSET, INDIRECT, ROWS, COLUMNS, NOW, TODAY and CELL.

If your workbook is large I recommend you use volatile functions sparingly…. unless you have a super computer (and no one else needs to open your workbook), in which case feel free to fling volatile functions around as you wish!

For more tutorials like this sign up to our free weekly Excel tips & tricks newsletter below, or click the Facebook 'like' button and get updates to this blog instantly.

Cool INDEX Function Trick
Mynda Treacy

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AUTHOR Mynda Treacy Co-Founder / Owner at My Online Training Hub

CIMA qualified Accountant with over 25 years experience in roles such as Global IT Financial Controller for investment banking firms Barclays Capital and NatWest Markets.

Mynda has been awarded Microsoft MVP status every year since 2014 for her expertise and contributions to educating people about Microsoft Excel.

Mynda teaches several courses here at MOTH including Excel Expert, Excel Dashboards, Power BI, Power Query and Power Pivot.

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Category: Excel FormulasTag: lookup
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dick Lloyd

    January 12, 2018 at 12:49 am

    Please can you list other non-volatile functions, or, better still, provide a list of ALL functions and indicate which are volatile and which are non-volatile?

    Reply
    • Catalin Bombea

      January 12, 2018 at 1:50 am

      Hi Dick,
      Here is a good article about volatile function You can find useful info here: Excel Recalculation

      Reply
  2. Annam

    January 4, 2013 at 3:43 pm

    Hi Mynda,

    For the first formula, you mentioned how there were two blank cells in row 1 and 2… I dont see any blank cells….:S

    Reply
    • Mynda Treacy

      January 4, 2013 at 8:45 pm

      Hi Annam,

      Sorry for the confusion. You can’t tell from the image but the formula is in row 3 and rows 1 and 2 above are blank.

      Kind regards,

      Mynda.

      Reply
  3. Samwel Kitumbo

    January 19, 2012 at 6:16 pm

    Very interesting, easy to learn

    Reply
    • Mynda Treacy

      January 19, 2012 at 9:01 pm

      Thanks Samwel 🙂

      Reply

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