Excel MINA Function

The Excel MINA function returns the smallest numeric value in a range of values. The MINA function ignores empty cells, but evaluates the logical values TRUE and FALSE as 1 and 0, respectively.
- value1 - Number, reference to numeric value, or range that contains numeric values.
- value2 - [optional] Number, reference to numeric value, or range that contains numeric values.
Like the MIN function, the MINA function returns the smallest numeric value in a supplied set of data. For example, the MINA function can return the lowest test score, the fastest time in a race, the lowest temperature, or the smallest sales number. Arguments can be provided as constants, or as cell references or ranges:
The primary difference between MIN and MINA is that MINA evaluates TRUE and FALSE values as 1 and 0 respectively. Microsoft documentation also suggests that MINA evaluates numbers entered as text differently from MIN:
If you want to include logical values and text representations of numbers in a reference as part of the calculation, use the MINA function.
This is a bit confusing. In my testing, MIN and MINA both evaluate text representations of numbers when supplied directly as arguments. For example:
The difference appears to be that when text values exist in a cell reference, MINA evaluates them as zero in the calculation, whereas MIN simply ignores them. For example, if A1 contains "5", and A2 contains 10:
Further, MINA appears to evaluate any text value in a cell reference as zero (i.e. "apple" would also evaluate as zero).
Notes
- The MINA function ignores empty cells.
- The MINA function accepts up to 255 arguments.
- If arguments contain no numbers, MINA returns 0.
- Arguments can be provided as numbers, names, arrays, references, logical values, or numbers as text.
- MINA function evaluates TRUE and FALSE values as 1 and 0 respectively.
- In a cell reference, a "number as text" is evaluated (and included) as zero.
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