Microsoft Excel makes it much easier to work in a wide variety of areas, thanks to the fast and high-quality calculations that formulas provide. You set the formulas that determine the order of actions and calculations in Excel, and in order for all calculations to be correct, you need to know the rules for entering formulas into program blocks. In the formula for its performance, you need to substitute certain values of quantities. You should also know the meanings of the operators that determine the actions to be performed on the values - for example, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, percentage, and so on.
Instructions
Step 1
All Excel formulas begin with an equal sign. Paired parentheses in Excel are always in bold for convenience. Also, you need to remember several comparison operators, without which it is impossible to compose formulas - equal signs, more, less, not less, not more, not equal. All of them result in either falsehood or truth.
Step 2
Use the & sign to combine text values in a formula. In addition, address operators, or range operators, are important in formulas, which determine in which cells to apply the formula (for example, A1: E4). Use a semicolon to combine non-adjacent cell references.
Step 3
When composing a formula, always pay attention to the correct addressing. To do this, select the cell in which you want to place the formula with the mouse button, and enter an equal sign in it. Then select the cell you want to represent in the formula, or a range of cells.
Step 4
Then enter the operator in the cell. Hit Enter. When selecting non-contiguous cells, enter the operator in the first and last cells, not forgetting the concatenation operator.
Step 5
Each cell has its own individual address, defined by row and column. A relative reference is a record of this address - for example, A3 or B8. If in cell A3 you enter the formula = A3 and drag the cell with the formula down, then the formula will automatically change to = A4.
Step 6
Formulas in Excel work only when they are written without errors. There are some of the most common formula errors. If ##### is displayed as an error, it means that the formula result does not fit in the cell, or the result is a negative number. Error #VALUE! denotes an invalid argument type.
Step 7
Error #NAME? means that the program was unable to recognize the name in the formula. # ND stands for undefined data in a formula. #LINK! Is an error indicating an invalid reference to an invalid or deleted cell.
Step 8
Error #NUM! Indicates that a numeric value is not correct for presentation in the program. If you have overlapping areas in your table that do not have common cells, you will see a formula error # NULL!
