Excel Formulas Issues How To Create Basic
Excel Formulas Issues Update The Numbers

Open a new Excel file and select cell C1 to make it the active cell.

Former Lifewire writer Ted French is a Microsoft Certified Professional who teaches and writes about spreadsheets and spreadsheet programs.

An Excel spreadsheet is helpful for displaying information in an organized way but Excel can be used for so much more.

Its powerful calculation ability enables you to enter, manipulate, and analyze numbers.

To take advantage of this function, you need to learn about formulas, which are essentially math equations.

Excel Formulas Issues How To Create Basic

Here we describe how to create basic and slightly more complex formulas in Excel.

Writing a spreadsheet formula is different from writing an equation in math class.

The most notable difference is that Excel formulas start with the equal sign ( ) instead of ending with it.

After you type the formula and press Enter on your keyboard, the result of the formula appears in the cell.

For example, if you type the formula above, 32 into a cell and press Enter, the result, 5, appears in the cell.

The formula is still there, but it doesnt appear in your spreadsheet.

If you select the cell, though, the formula appears in the formula bar at the top of the Excel screen.

Continuing with our example, you would not enter the numbers 3 and 2, but instead would name cells where these numbers have been entered (see Using Cell References below for more on cell naming).

When you write a formula this way, the formula cell always shows the sum of the numbers in those cells, even if the numbers change.

Heres a real-life example of how this approach can be useful.

Say you lead a team of salespeople and are tracking their monthly and quarterly sales.

Instead of entering every quarterly sales value into a formula, you use cell references to identify the cells where those values can be found within the spreadsheet.

Rows are designated with numbers (1, 2, 3, etc.) shown along the left side of the spreadsheet, while columns are designated with letters (A, B, C, etc.) shown along the top.

To refer to a cell, use the column letter and row number together, such as A1 or W22 (the column letter always comes first).

If you have a cell selected, you can see its reference at the top of the screen in the Name Box next to the formula bar.

In the image above, notice the cell references in the formula bar: E2, I2, M2, and Q2.

They refer to the quarterly sales numbers for the salesperson named Jean.

The formula adds those numbers together to come up with the annual sales number.

Excel Formulas Issues Update The Numbers

If you update the numbers in one or more of those cells, Excel will recalculate and the result will still be the sum of the numbers in the referred cells.

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