Reply: 2
From: Sim' Hampel
We got taught a little rule in maths at school: BODMAS
Which stands for
Brackets
Order (ie. powers)
Division
Multiplication
Addition
Subtraction
This is the widely accepted standard for calculations, which Excel also abides by.
For more information, the help file in Excel 2000 says this:
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About constructing formulas
The structure or order of the elements in a formula determine the final result of the calculation. Formulas in Microsoft Excel follow a specific syntax, or order, that includes an equal sign (=) followed by the elements to be calculated (the operands), which are separated by calculation operators. Each operand can be a value that does not change (a constant value), a cell or range reference, a label, a name, or a worksheet function.
Excel performs the operations from left to right — according to the order of operator precedence — starting with the equal sign (=). You can control the order of calculation by using parentheses to group operations that should be performed first. For example, the following formula produces 11 because Excel calculates multiplication before addition. The formula multiplies 2 by 3 and then adds 5 to the result.
=5+2*3
In contrast, if you use parentheses to change the syntax, Excel adds 5 and 2 together and then multiplies the result by 3 to produce 21.
=(5+2)*3
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The order in which Microsoft Excel performs operations in formulas
If you combine several operators in a single formula, Microsoft Excel performs the operations in the order shown in the following table. If a formula contains operators with the same precedence — for example, if a formula contains both a multiplication and division operator — Excel evaluates the operators from left to right. To change the order of evaluation, enclose the part of the formula to be calculated first in parentheses. For more information about calculation operators, click .
Operator Description
: (colon)
(single space)
, (comma)
– Negation (as in –1)
% Percent
^ Exponentiation
* and / Multiplication and division
+ and – Addition and subtraction
& Connects two strings of text (concatenation)
= < > <= >= <> Comparison
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