Formulas and Cells

Arithmetic formulas are the foundation of Excel calculations. They allow you to perform basic mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Mastering these formulas will enable you to handle a wide range of numerical tasks in Excel.

First of all you have to remember that you can convert each excel cell to a mini calculator that you can use by typing an equal sign (=) at the beginning.

You can see that above the cells is a input line with fx at the beginning of it and a little to the left is a cell you are working with (in this case is A1 you can see it is also highlighted with a green color).

Note

You can type formulas and expressions directly into the cell or in the formula bar above. There is no difference between the two methods.

As you can see the content of the cell A1 is different from the formula input line, even though it is the same when we write simple text.

This is because, as mentioned earlier, the equal sign (=) changes the content to a formula, and everything written after it is treated differently.