This Excel 2007 tutorial can really help you to save plenty of your precious time by avoiding those mistakes. Here are the tricks:

Tip 1: When the equal sign is placed as the first character in a cell that has not been pre-formatted as text, it tells Excel to create a formula.

All Excel formulas start with the "equal? sign, that is = sign.

Tip 2: Do not type data that can vary into a formula. Instead place the data in a cell and refer to it using a cell reference.

If you type data that can vary, once change, the result of the formula automatically wrong. If you refer it using cell reference, the result is always correct.

Tip 3: By typing the numbers that can vary into cells and referring to them in our formulas using cell references, we gain the ability to edit formulas easily and check different scenarios without much effort.

Tip 4: Learn the symbols and the order of operations that uses in Excel.

In Excel 2007, operators are executed in the order such as parenthesis has the highest precedence follows by multiplication and division, addition and subtraction, etc.

If you encounter two operators with the same level of precedence, always evaluate the operators from the left to right.

Tip 5: Using Excel's built-in functions can simplify and shorten formula creation.

Excel has over 300 built-in functions divided into various function categories. Some commonly used functions are: SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MAX, MIN and ROUND.

Tip 6: Easy ways to find suitable functions to solve your problem.

Finding functions in Excel can be accomplished by reading the descriptions, searching for a common sense name in the list of functions, or using the "Search" feature in the Insert Function dialog box.

Tip 7: Finding the best function arguments to use is not hard.

Figuring out what arguments to use for a given function can be accomplished by reading the descriptions, or by clicking the help link in the Argument dialog box.

Tip 8: Using functions with ranges instead of a collection of individual cells allows structural updating to spreadsheets more easily.

For example: Use "=SUM(A13:A17)" instead of "= A13+A14+A15+A16+A17". The previous formula will update when we insert a new rows but the later will not.