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Many of Mesa's functions can take a variety of different arguments. In almost all cases, Mesa's functions can take the specified type of argument, an expression that returns the specified type of argument, or the address of a cell containing the specified type of argument. The following is a brief explanation of what can be used as arguments in Mesa's functions. Numbers Many of Mesa's functions take numbers as arguments. The numbers can be entered directly into the formula, or they can be given as the cell address of a cell containing to number. A blank cell has a value of zero. Occasionally a function needs a specific type of number. Here is a list of some of the specific types of numbers that functions may take. Integer: a number with no fractional portion. 1, 42, -28, 589 positive number: any number with a value of zero or greater. 0, 28, 39.541, 0.028 Strings When strings are needed as arguments to functions, they can either be typed directly into the formula, in which case they need to be place in quotation marks, or the address of the cell containing the string may be given, in which case the contents of the cell does not have to be in quotation marks. For example, the following expressions both return START. =UPPER("start") A 1 start =UPPER(A1) Dates Mesa has a number of date related functions that take dates as their arguments. In most cases these functions take a date serial number as their argument. (Specific exceptions are given in the function descriptions, see "Date Functions".) A date serial number is a number used by Mesa to represent dates so that they may be formatted in a number of different ways. The number corresponds to the number of days since January 1, 1970. Dates after the year 2000 can be specified by placing a 1 before the year. The easiest way to obtain a date serial number is to enter the desired date into a cell as you would normally, and give the address of the cell containing the date. Cell Addresses A cell address in Mesa consists of the letter corresponding to the column of the cell, and the number of the row of the cell. For instance, cell A1 is the cell in the upper left hand corner of the worksheet. It is the cell in row one and column A. Some Mesa functions take a cell address as their argument. In most Mesa functions, when you enter the address of a cell as an argument, the function uses the contents of that cell as the argument. In a few functions, however, the function is looking for information about the cell itself. This is the case for functions that ask specifically for a cell address as an argument. An example of a function that takes a cell address as its argument is the function ISEMPTY, which checks to see if the cell at a given address is empty. =ISEMPTY(U2) Ranges Ranges can also be used as arguments in Mesa's functions. In some cases, the function can take a list of numbers as arguments, and a range that contains an appropriate list may be entered as an argument. In other cases, a function may need to know the size an location of a database, and therefore needs a range as an argument. Ranges can be specified in one of two ways. The simplest way is to specify it by giving the address of the cells in the upper left corner and lower right corner of the range separated by a colon. For example A1:F10 is the range that occupies rows 1 through 10 of columns A through F. You can also use the name of a ranged that was named using the Label Inspector (See "Label Inspector"). If you had used the Label Inspector to create a range named Rates, you could enter Rates as a range argument. =ROWS(A1:F10) -> 10 =ROWS(Rates) Constants Mesa has a number of function constants that can be used as arguments in Mesa's functions. For a complete explanation of Mesa's constants, see "Constants". Expressions The arguments to functions can contain calls to other functions as well as formulas containing constants and operators. As long as the formulas returns an appropriate value, it may be used as an argument for another function. In this way you can create complex formulas using Mesa's functions. |
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