SPREADSHEET TRAINER

Full Training Course for Excel® 2013:

LESSON: BASIC FORMULAS

LEVEL: BEGINNER

CONTENTS:

6 Basic Formulas

16 The Order of Operations WWW.SPREADSHEETTRAINER.COM

Using formulas is when beginning users often start to understand Excel’s usefulness, power and efficiency.

The five operators in this presentation, used with Excel’s formula syntax, will help accomplish many common tasks.

This presentation shows you how to enter and edit basic formulas in Excel using values, cell references

and/or other formulas as inputs.

By the end of this presentation you can:

calculate in a cell using mathematical operators

use values, cells and other formulas as formula inputs

change the order of operations with parentheses

Let’s add up the two numbers here in the second row.

Formulas start with an equals (=) sign. This tells Excel to treat what you type next as a formula, rather than values or text.

When you complete the entry, Excel displays the answer in the cell. The formula bar shows the underlying calculation.

(If you leave out the equals sign, Excel just treats the entry as text and doesn’t calculate it.)

What if you want to calculate using the values in other cells?

To refer to other cells’ values, type their addresses into the formula.

You can also do this by clicking on the cells, or using arrow keys.

The calculation updates automatically when the input cells change:

The other basic operators in Excel are minus (-), multiply (*), Divide (/) and exponent (^).

Of course, you can extend a formula by adding additional inputs:

You can use combinations of values, cell references and other formulas/functions as arguments for your calculation.

The Order of Operations

Like maths, where there is more than one operation, Excel calculates using the natural order of arithmetic operations –BODMAS.

Operations are calculated in the below order:

Brackets first, then:

Orders (ie powers & roots)

Division & Multiplication (going right-to-left)

Addition & Subtraction (going left-to-right)

The example demonstrates the order of operations:

2^2*3+5 = 4*3+5 = 12+5 = 17

Enter parentheses ( ) to manually change the order of operations.

i.e. 2^2*(3+5) = 2^2*8 = 4*8 = 32

You can enter multiple sets of parentheses for more changes:

i.e. 2^(2*(3+5)) = 2^(2*8) = 2^16 = 65536

Full Training Course for Excel® 2013:

NEXT: BASIC FUNCTIONS

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Spreadsheet Trainer is an independent training program and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft, Excel, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Excel visuals used with permission from Microsoft. Photographs used with thanks from www.freerangestock.com.