Excel Certification Practice Exam 2025 - Free Excel Certification Practice Questions and Study Guide

The function used to find the average of a series of numbers in Excel is AVERAGE(). This function calculates the mean by summing all the numbers in a specified range and then dividing that total by the count of the numbers. Its syntax is straightforward, making it easy to use when analyzing data.

For example, if you have a range of cells containing numbers, you can simply use AVERAGE(range) to get the numerical average. This function is widely used in various analyses and reporting tasks, such as calculating average sales, scores, or any other numeric information where finding a central tendency is necessary.

Other options like AVG() and MEAN() are not valid Excel functions and will result in errors if you try to use them in a formula. While the option of SUM()/COUNT() involves manually adding all the numbers in a range and then dividing by how many numbers there are, it is more cumbersome and less efficient than directly using the AVERAGE() function, which automates this process.