It can sometimes be difficult to make sense of complex Excel formulas, especially if you’re not familiar with the functions being used.

One great way to see what’s happening is to evaluate a portion of the formula at a time to determine why Excel is giving you the results that it is. To do this make sure the Formula Bar is visible. Now highlight a portion of the formula in question and hit F9. Excel will convert the formula to its value.

This is a great way to figure out why a complicated formula is giving you #N/A errors.

Just be sure to hit Escape rather than Enter so that the original formula stays intact, without embedding the value that you calculated, when you want to stop editing the formula.