Which Excel formula?

[Efkay]

Not being particularly 'au fait' with financial formulas I'm unsure which one to use within Excel to give me the answer to the following:

On a capital sum of money at a fixed rate of interest, how much interest in total would be earned in a (variable) period of time. Eg �15,000 at 6.3% for 14 months or 36 months.

I can work it out with a pencil and paper, but would love to have the right formula so that I can vary the individual components without using up too much paper!

Hope someone can point me in the right direction.

[puzzlesRus]

I know that this does not directly answer your question but you might find the following nifty interest calculater to be useful :-

http://www.mw-plus.com/webdic.php

[Efkay]

puzzlesRus - that's simply brilliant and does exactly what it says on the tin! More so, I don't have to grapple with Excel!

I clicked on the link and have now downloaded the program to my pc. The calculations are simplicity itself - many thanks!

[Machecoul]

Go to Excel - click insert - select function.

In the left column highlight financial

and have a browse through the suggestions in the right column.

I couldn't work out which one to use!! If any.

Alternatively if you can do it on paper you can do it in excel - just set up cells for the values and the interest cell will contain the formual using the previous cells.

eg A1 is Capital / b1 is interest rate / c1 is period / d1 is interest earned. Now work out the calculation you need to do to get the interest earned.

If you do it this way you can also vary all the values.

[Efkay]

Machecoul - thanks for taking the time to reply and I too reacted the same way (I couldn't work out which one to use!! If any.)

Likewise, if I could actually do as you suggest ...Now work out the calculation you need to do to get the interest earned.... I wouldn't have needed to ask this forum! Sad aren't I !! In all honesty, I failed to grasp the ins and outs of things like 'open brackets', 'close brackets' way back when in school - so I haven't a hope now!! ;-)