How to Find the MAX Value in Excel

Last Updated on April 25, 2024

Excel is by far one of the most popular spreadsheet programs developed by Microsoft. Microsoft Excel has been a core component of numerous offices throughout the past few decades. It enables users to organize, format, and even calculate data from a given spreadsheet. 

For those who need additional assistance with all of this work, Excel classes are available. This means anyone can perform calculations, data analysis, and data visualization upon mastering Excel and its core functionalities. 

To get a better perspective on how this works, we will go over the procedures involved with finding the MAX value in Excel. 

Excel MAX Value: How All of It Works

There will come a time in anyone’s business operations when they must find out the highest number or value within Excel. However, to truly understand how it works, we first need to understand how the MAX Function works in Excel. Note that users can also filter for multiple values in Excel.

The MAX Function in Excel

The MAX function within Excel returns the highest value within the specific data set. The syntax goes as follows: ‘MAX (number1, [number2], ..)’

The number can be represented by a numeric value, an array, a named range, or even a reference within a cell or range that contains a number. While Number 1 is a must-have, Number 2 or any other subsequent numbers are optional. This MAX functionality is available in all versions of Excel or Office 365 released thus far.

Now that we have a broader understanding of how this works, we can move on to the actual calculation process.

Getting the MAX Value in Excel

For an individual using Excel to create a MAX formula, they need to type numbers in the directory list in the arguments. An example would be ‘=MAX (1,2,3,4)’ and so on.

Throughout everyday use cases and encounters, users rarely find cases where the numbers are hard coded. This means they will typically deal with ranges and cells. With this concept in mind, one of the simplest ways to build a MAX formula to find the highest value in the range is to type ‘=MAX(‘ in a cell, then select a range of numbers using the mouse pointer and typing in the closing parenthesis. Now, all that’s left for the user to do is tap the ‘Enter’ key. Then, they can complete the formula.

However, users can use Excel to make a MAX formula automatically if the numbers are in a continuous row or column. To do this, they visit the ‘Home’ tab, click on the ‘Formats’ group, and click on ‘AutoSum.’ After, they select ‘MAX’ from the menu that will pop up.

This will insert a formula that’s already prepared within a cell below the selected range. This means that users must pay careful attention to having at least one blank cell underneath the list of the numbers they have selected for the best results.

MAX formulas can contain up to 255 arguments in a worksheet. The arguments must contain a number, or the function will return zero. If the arguments contain one or more error values, the error gets returned. Any empty cells are completely ignored, and logical values or text representations of numbers supplied directly are processed.

Moving Forward With the Usage of Microsoft Excel

With the above mentioned information, anyone can use the formulas to create more complex values and get far better results. For example, users can highlight the MAX value in a range, find the absolute MAX value in Excel, and even see the highest value while ignoring errors completely.

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