How to Write Formulas in Excel 2013
Excel formulas can do everything that a basic calculator can do, so if you’re in a hurry and don’t want to pull up the Windows Calculator application, you can enter a formula in Excel to get a quick result. Experimenting with this type of formula is a great way to get accustomed to formulas in general.
Excel also has an advantage over some basic calculators (including the one in Windows): It easily does exponentiation. For example, if you want to calculate 5 to the 8th power, you would write it in Excel as =5^8.
Just as in basic math, formulas are calculated by an order of precedence. The table lists the order.
|1||Anything in parentheses||=2*(2+1)|
|3||Multiplication and division||=1+2*2|
|4||Addition and subtraction||=10–4|
In this exercise, you learn how to enter some formulas that perform simple math calculations.
Launch Excel if needed and open a new blank workbook. If you already have another workbook open, press Ctrl+N to create a new workbook.
Click cell A1, type =2+2, and press Enter.
The result of the formula appears in cell A1.
Notice that the formula you entered appears there, as shown in this figure.
Click cell A2, type =2+4*3, and press Enter.
The result of the formula appears in cell A2.
In this case, because of the order of operations, the multiplication was done first (4 times 3 equals 12), and then 2 was added for a total of 14.
Press the up-arrow key once to move the cell cursor back to A2 and examine the formula in the formula bar.
In cell A3, type =(2+4)*3 and press Enter.
In this case, the parentheses forced the addition to occur first (2 plus 4 equals 6), and then 3 was multiplied for a total of 18.
Press the up-arrow key once to move the cell cursor back to A3 and note the formula shown.
Close the workbook without saving changes to it.