I think it would be fair to assume that ALL excel functions behave as teh article describes (ie the same as SUM and SUMIF). (I wasn't aware of this article, but it makes sense when you think about it...)
Behind the scenes the data in cells is stored in OO data structures such that only cells with non-default values and formatting will have been created.
It's highly probable that the value data and formatting data are help in separate containers.
So when Excel is using a formula on a range it is working on the data structures and consequently only works with the cells that have values.
I hope that a whole column with cells having different formatting (but very values) does not cause the SUM and SUMIF formulas to scan through every cell.
If in doubt you could do an experiment with the formulas you want to use.
The link you gave talked about formulas that behave differently and explicitly named VBA user created functions and array formulas - which makes sense.
Also, note that the article says using "Structured Table References" is the best approach. (ie not only storing your data in ranges but storing your data in excel tables. Created from a range using Ribbon:INSERT>Table).
These tables will allow any function to be used more efficiently as the range used is limited to the number of rows the table has.
I hope this helps.
Harvey
Set rng = Intersect(rng, rng.Worksheet.UsedRange)
in VBA. It is not necessary efficient either, if you have deleted a lot of rows/columns it is quite inefficient. There are quite a few discussions on how to find the last row and/or column in Excel more efficiently with theRange.Find
function. – user3819867