Double square brackets appear in structured references in Excel when column headers contain spaces or special characters. They're also inserted into formulas when you reference header and total rows ...

Fix Excel formulas that won’t spill! Learn how to troubleshoot #VALUE errors caused by Analysis ToolPak functions and improve your workflow.

Have you ever followed a YouTube tutorial, carefully copied an Excel formula, and hit “Enter,” only to be met with an error or baffling results? It’s a ...

A. Excel’s TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER functions allow users to quickly split up text in ways that used to require combinations of functions like LEFT, RIGHT, MID, and FIND, leading to some confusing ...

This is my simple way to use the VLOOKUP function in Excel to find data fast. I walk through how I use VLOOKUP to look up inventory amounts from a table. This helps me quickly check how many items we ...

Clay Halton was a Business Editor at Investopedia and has been working in the finance publishing field for more than five years. He also writes and edits personal finance content, with a focus on ...

Daniel Jassy, CFA, is an Investopedia Academy instructor and the founder of SPYderCRusher Research. He contributes to Excel and Algorithmic Trading. David Kindness is a Certified Public Accountant ...

On October 25, 2025, the author and game-show host Ken Jennings joined the senior editor Tyler Foggatt onstage at the 26th ...

Calculating the cost of goods sold gives a business insight into its performance and helps calculate profit. Many, or all, of the products featured on this page are from our advertising partners who ...

Paid-in capital shows funds raised from stock sales, key for evaluating company funding. Fluctuations in stock prices don't alter a company’s recorded paid-in capital. Treasury stock reflects ...