How to Use AVERAGE Function in Google Sheets

The AVERAGE function in Google Sheets is useful if you want to get the average value of a data set.

The AVERAGE function does this simply by providing the data range that you want to average. This would surely cut off the process of adding and dividing values.

Let’s take an example.

Say we have 50 employees under our Sales team.

We want to check the average salary of the Sales team.

So how do we do that?

Simple. We can use our AVERAGE function to get the average salary of our Sales team. We just have to select the data range, which is the salary portion.

The function will automatically output to the average salary.

The AVERAGE function seems easy. Surprisingly, it is helpful in a lot of circumstances. You can use it to average grades, points, records, and a lot more.

Easy, right?

Let’s go straight into real-business examples where we will deal with actual values and textual strings and how we can write our own AVERAGE function in Google Sheets to compute those data.

The Anatomy of the AVERAGE Function.

The way we write the AVERAGE function is as follows:

=AVERAGE(value1, [value2, …])

Let’s break this down to understand better what each terminology means:

• = the equal sign is how we start off every function in Google Sheets
• AVERAGE() this is our function. We need to supply a data set so we can see how the AVERAGE function works
• value1 is a required data to be averaged
• [value2, …] is an optional data value.

⚠️ Now a few notes before writing your own AVERAGE function in Google Sheets.

1. The AVERAGE function can only take a maximum of 30 arguments.
2. The texts inside the value arguments are completely ignored.
3. If you want a text value to be considered as 0 values, you can simply use AVERAGEA.

A Real Example of Using AVERAGE Function

The below example shows how AVERAGE functions are used in Google Sheets.

The example above shows exactly how the AVERAGE function works to get the mean salary of Sales Agents, Sales Managers, and All Sales Employees. The formula outputs $453.33, $836.67, and $833.50, respectively. The functions are as follows:

=AVERAGE(D5:D7)
=AVERAGE(D2,D9,D11)
=AVERAGE(D2:D11)

Here’s what this example does:

• We started off by actively selected cell D13 and we want to use the AVERAGE function to get the mean salary of sales agents, sales managers, and all sales employees. The results are shown in cells D13, D14, and D15, respectively.
• For the first item, we just selected the salary of sales agents. That would be in cells D5 to D7.
• Next, to get the mean salary of sales managers, we selected cells D2, D9, and D11.
• Lastly, we have selected all the salaries in column D to get the mean salary of all employees.

Easy, right? Have a go at it yourself by making a copy of the spreadsheet using the link I have attached below:

How to Use AVERAGE Function in Google Sheets

1. Click on any cell to make it active so that we can write our formula. For this guide, I have selected cell D13.

2. Now, we start to write our formula by typing an equal sign (=). This is how we start any function in Google Sheets. We will follow it up with our function, AVERAGE. Remember always to add this before we select our data set.

3. Nice! For the first item, we are to get the average salary of sales agents. Therefore, we need to look out for all ‘sales agents‘ in our database and select their salaries. For this guide, I have chosen cells D5:D7.

4. Let’s close our formula with a close parenthesis, “)” and hit on the Enter key.

5. Good work! Let’s do the same process for the next items. We need to look out for all ‘sales managers‘. So we need to select the cells D2, D9, and D11. After closing it up and hitting on the ‘Enter key’, you should have an answer of $836.67.

6. Lastly, to get the average salary of all sales employees, we will simply select all the salaries in column D. Hit on the ‘Enter’ key, and you’re done!

That’s pretty much it. You can now use the AVERAGE functions together with the other numerous Google Sheets formulas to create even more powerful formulas that can make your life much easier. 🙂

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