CREATING FORMULAS IN EXCEL
Overview.
Formulas are one of the most commonly used features of Excel. They can be used to carry out simple addition and subtraction or far more complex mathematical calculations. This guide is a primer on adding formulas to an Excel spreadsheet and performing basic calculations with them. Formulas perform calculations on data that is stored in the cells in a spreadsheet. The whole reason formulas exist in Excel is that they are used to perform calculations dynamically, in other words, they make life easier for users. Say, you have a spreadsheet with a column that has 100 rows and every row has a number in it. You can use a calculator to figure out the sum of all 100 numbers but formulas make it much easier because all you need to do is specify the range where the numbers you want to add are (in this case from row 0 to row 100) and the addition would be performed automatically. And the best part is that if you notice that you have a wrong number in row 55 you can just edit the number right there and the sum would be recalculated automatically.
Step-by-step guide on inserting formulas into a spreadsheet.
For the purposes of this guide we are using only basic mathematical operations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The aim of this guide is to provide a basic understanding of how formulas are created in Excel.
Click on the cell where you want the formula's result to be displayed. This must be an empty cell somewhere in the spreadsheet; do not use cells that already have some data in them to display formula’s results. In the picture below we clicked on B1 cell.
Type an equal sign ( = ) to let Excel know you are creating a formula.
Now we need to let Excel know what is the first number you want to perform your mathematical operation on. Remember that formulas are used to perform calculations on the data that is already in the spreadsheet. All we need to do is just point the formula to the cell in which the number we want to perform a mathematical operation on is located. Just click that cell and you will see its ‘address’ added after the ( = ) sign. In the example we clicked on 46 which is located in A3 cell.
Now we have to specify the type of mathematical operation we want to perform on the cell from the previous step. For addition type ( + ); for subtraction type ( - ); for multiplication type ( * ); for division type ( / ). Here we typed in ( * ).
The last step is to tell the formula how much we want to add, subtract, multiply or divide by. Just like in Step 3, click on the cell that holds the number you want to use. You will see its ‘address’ show up after the sign you typed in in Step 4. Here we point the formula to 7 which has address A6.
Now just hit Enter to let Excel know that you are finished creating the formula. It will now displa result in the cell.
Hints
In steps 3 and 5 you can type in numbers instead of pointing to the cells. For example, a formula that looks like ‘=4+8’ is still a valid one and Excel would perform the addition. The main benefit of using cell addresses is that if data in one or both cells changes the formula would automatically recalculate itself based on the new data in the cells. You can even combine cell addresses and static numbers in a formula, like this ‘=A1*2’. In this case whatever number you have in cell A1 will be multiplied by two.
