Array

[Guest]

What is an array? Is it having 2 formulas in one cell? How does it work?

 

[MrExcel]

Introduction here:
http://www.mrexcel.com/tip011.shtml

Bill

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

On 2002-03-15 05:55, Anonymous wrote:
What is an array? Is it having 2 formulas in one cell? How does it work?

The term 'array' is often used to refer to a column (e.g., A1:A10)or row range (e.g., A5:D5) housing values.

In technical Excelese, it refers to an unordered set of values, as in

{"xza",1,"",7,8,23} [1]

as opposed to a scalar like: 7.

Again in Excelese, [1] is also called a constant array.

Most computations using formulas built with one or more worksheet functions returns a scalar value as would:

=AVERAGE(A1:A6)

Many worksheet functions are also capable of returning a set of values (that is, a constant array) as result. When it's appropriate/required to compute a constant array, that intent must be conveyed to Excel's engine by entering the target formula by using the key combination CONTROL+SHIFT+ENTER.

An array formula performs multiple calculations and then return either a single result (a scalar) or multiple results (a constant array). See 'array' in Excel's Help file.

There are also functions like SUMPRODUCT or FREQUENCY which, in most cases, do not require entering the formulas built with them by using CONTROL+SHIFT+ENTER.

You can find many formulas set up for concrete/well-specified problems as array-formulas or SUMPRODUCT formulas in Archives of this board.