Custom Number Format

Figure 1: Write Functions max, min, and average

Do you ever want to include additional information inside of a cell that contains or calculates a number?  Here’s how.  Let’s pretend you have a classroom of students.  You have a list of their Semester Grade Point Averages and want to quickly summarize the class, looking at the highest, lowest, and average.

To accomplish it, you write the formulas to calculate the three figures.  The three functions you’ll use are:
max (), min (), and average () [See Figure 1: Write Functions: max, min, and average]

The next step is to reformat the cell, changing the default or current setting.  Right click on the cell, and select “Format Cells” toward the bottom of the drop-down window.  Once selected, the first tab of the format window, “Number”, will appear.  Choose the “Custom” Category at the bottom.

You’ll then see (to the right) a “Sample” section which shows the result of any custom function you write based on the selected cell’s current contents.  There are several predefined choices, but we’ll write our own.  We can, however, look at this list to get an idea of the different number and date characters (#,$,mm,yyyy) allowed. Read more of this post