Microsoft Excel – What is the DAVERAGE Function

Excel’s Daverage function calculates the average of values in a field (column) in a database for selected records, that satisfy user-specified criteria.

The syntax of the Excel Daverage function is :

DAVERAGE( database, field, criteria )

where the arguments are shown below:

database	A range of cells containing the database. The top row of the database should specify the field names.
field	The field (column) within the database, for which the average is to be calculated. This can either be a field number, or can be the field name (i.e. the header in the top row of the database) encased in quotes (e.g. "Area", "Quarter", etc.)
criteria	A range of cells that contain the criteria, to specify which records should be included in the calculation. The range can include one or more criteria, which are presented as a field name in one cell and the condition for that field in the cell below. e.g. Quarter Area >2 North

Wildcards

You can also use the following wildcards in text-related criteria:

?    -    matches any single character

*    -    matches any sequence of characters

if you do actually want to find the ? or * character, type the ~ symbol before this character in your search.

e.g. the condition "A*e" will match all cells containing a text string beginning with "A" and ending in "e".

The criteria supplied beneath each field heading can be either:

	-	a numeric value (including an integer, decimal, date, time, or logical value) (eg. 10, 01/01/2011, FALSE)
or
	-	a text string (eg. "Text", "Wednesday")
or
	-	an expression (eg. ">2", "<>0")

Note that the Excel database functions are not case sensitive. So, for example, the criteria ="North" will be satisfied by cells containing the text "North" or "north".

Excel Daverage Function Examples

	A	B	C	D
1	Quarter	Area	Sales Rep.	Sales
2	1	North	Jeff	$223,000
3	1	North	Chris	$125,000
4	1	South	Carol	$456,000
5	1	South	Tina	$289,000
6	2	North	Jeff	$322,000
7	2	North	Chris	$340,000
8	2	South	Carol	$198,000
9	2	South	Tina	$222,000
10	3	North	Jeff	$310,000
11	3	North	Chris	$250,000
12	3	South	Carol	$460,000
13	3	South	Tina	$395,000
14	4	North	Jeff	$261,000
15	4	North	Chris	$389,000
16	4	South	Carol	$305,000
17	4	South	Tina	$188,000

The following examples are based on the simple database on the right, which stores the sales figures for four sales representatives, over the four quarters of a year.

Example 1

In the example below, the Daverage function is used to calculate the average quarterly sales in quarters 2, 3 and 4, for the Sales Rep. "Tina". The criteria are specified in cells F1 - G2 and the format of the Daverage function is shown in cell F3.

	F	G
1	Quarter	Sales Rep.
2	>1	Tina
3	=DAVERAGE( A1:D17, "Sales", F1:G2 )

The above Daverage function calculates the average of the values in cells D9, D13 & D17, and therefore returns the value $268,333.

Example 2

In the example below, the Daverage function is used to calculate the average sales in quarter 1, by sales reps in the "South" area.

	F	G
1	Quarter	Area
2	1	South
3	=DAVERAGE( A1:D17, "Sales", F1:G2 )

The above Daverage function calculates the average of the values in cells D4 and D5 and so returns the value $372,500.

Note that, in the above two examples, instead of typing in "Sales" for the field argument, we could have simply used the number 4 (to denote the 4th column of the database).