Microsoft Excel: Rank Scores

Problem: You have four writers working on a project. Each week, you report how many pages they have written towards their goal, as shown in Fig. 374. You wish to have a formula that ranks them in high-to-low order.

Strategy: If you are not concerned about ties, then use the RANK function. The function requires two arguments. In plain language, you are asking the function to assign a rank to the value in H23 amongst all values in H23:H26.

As shown in Fig. 375, in cell F23, use =RANK(H23,$H$23:$H$26). Note that the H23:H26 range in the second parameter is in absolute reference style due to the dollar signs. This allows the formula to be easily copied to each name in the list.

Additional Details: The above version of the function will rank the values in high-to-low order. Sometimes you might need to rank in a low-to- high fashion. Golf is one such instance. You can specify an optional third parameter to specify the order. Using a third parameter of 1 will force the rank results to be reported in low-to-high order, as shown in Fig. 376.

Summary: The RANK function is useful for producing a ranking by using formulas.

Functions Discussed: =RANK()

Cross Reference: Rank a List Without Ties; Sorting with a Formula

Microsoft Excel: Rank Scores

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