daily calculations (please help)

[Guest]

I am trying to run a spreadsheet of daily calculations and I am having
trouble setting up the formulas. Here is an example of what I am trying to
do:

date reading usage
A B C
1 12345 11111
2 23456 11111
3 34567
4
31 56789
Then I am wanting to take the number that I put in the 1st for the new
month, to subtract the 31st to get the usage for that day.My delema is that I
can't figure out how to set up the formula to subtract the last day of the
month from the first of the next month. Since some months have 31 days, some
with 30, and the dreaded 28 of February.

I am sorry about the naivity, but I am new to this, so please bear with me.

What I would like to do is subtract the last day of the month from the first
of the new month. Can I do that on the same spreadsheet, or will I have to
use a different one? If so, how do I switch to a new sheet?

Thank you for any help.

 

[Guest]

Your formula for the first will have to differ from all your other formulas,
since so many special conditions need to be taken into account. Why don't you
look into the IF worksheet function and see if you can make that work for
you. If that is clear, great! if not, respond and we'll take it from there.

 

[Debra Dalgleish]

It shouldn't matter if the date is the first, last, or a middle day of
the month. The usage would be the current reading minus the previous
reading.

If you use real dates in the first column, instead of numbers, you would
be able to create a pivot table from the data, and show the totals by
year and month.