Excel ABS Function
Summary
The Excel ABS function returns the absolute value of a number. Negative numbers are converted to positive numbers, and positive numbers are unaffected.
Purpose
Find the absolute value of a number
Return value
A positive number.
Syntax
=ABS (number)
Arguments
- number - The number to get the absolute value of.
Version
Usage notes
For example, ABS(-3) returns a value of 3 and ABS(3) returns a value of 3, because the ABS function returns a number's distance from zero.
ABS formula examples
This can be an intimidating formula if you don't have a good background in math, but let's work through it step-by-step.
First, when you have a formula like this where one function (in this case ROUND) wraps around...
Ordinal numbers represent position or rank in a sequential order. They are normally written using a number + letter suffix: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.
To get an ordinal suffix for a small set of numbers, you can use the...
At the core, this is an INDEX and MATCH formula: MATCH locates the position of the closest match, feeds the position to INDEX, and INDEX returns the value at that position in the Trip column. The hard work is done...
Inside the IF function, the expected value is subtracted from the measured or actual value. The result may be positive or negative, depending on the actual value, so the ABS function is used to convert the result to a...
In this example, the goal is to calculate the variance between a Forecast (column C) and Actual (column D) as a percentage. For example, with a Forecast value of 100,000 and an Actual value of 112,000, we want to return...
This formula counts how many values are not in range of a fixed tolerance. The variation of each value is calculated with this:
ABS(data-target)
Because the named range "data" contains 10 values, subtracting the...
The ABS function is fully automatic. All you need to do is supply a number and ABS will return the absolute value.
Convert negative numbers in place
If you only need to convert negative numbers once, you can convert...
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