What is the most useless Excel Function

4 July 2006 by Ross McLean

It struck me today that the DGET function might be the most useless fuction in the whole of Excel, this is from the help file:

DGET

Extracts a single value from a column of a list or database that matches conditions you specify.

Syntax DGET(database,field,criteria)

…

Remarks

If no record matches the criteria, DGET returns the #VALUE! error value. If more than one record matches the criteria, DGET returns the #NUM! error value.

 

So it basically returnes one cells if the criteria happens to be the ONLY one that matches what you have specified. What gets your vote for the worst Function?

Categories: General • Permalink • 4 Comments »

Comments

  1. Omar says:
    5 July 2006 at 4:10 am

    Thanks for the pointer to DGET. I think that one will actually solve a potential problem for me. I won’t go into the details, but Vlookup concerns me in a certain application because it might match to the wrong value. DGET will make multiple matches fully apparent allowing me to deal with the situation.

    As far as my vote for the most useless function? Well, I’ve never been able to figure out where to use NA.

    Reply
  2. Andy Pope says:
    5 July 2006 at 7:50 pm

    Omar, NA() is very useful when chartnig results for formula

    =IF( mytest , myresult , NA() )

    stops lines from dropping to zero.

    Reply
  3. ross says:
    6 July 2006 at 9:21 am

    well there you go with the NA(), I didn’t even know there was such a formula! Thanks Andy!

    Reply
  4. Squiggler says:
    10 May 2010 at 4:14 pm

    A bit late but never mind!

    Product()

    and
    Concatenate()

    why when * and & work in less typing!

    Reply

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