Welcome to Excelling with Excel 2007

Working Smarter

You now have learned so much about Excel. Are you proud of what you can do?

Now, take a minute to look at what we are going to do now. Look to the left to see what your next adventures in Excel will be. When you finish this part of Excel you will be ready to move on to the more advanced features of what Excel can do.

Let's start this adventure with Operands. There is an assignment with this, so remember to email me.

We know =10+12 tells Excel to add 10 to 12
We know =12-10 tells Excel to subtract 10 from 12
We know =10*12 tells Excel to multiply 10 by 12
We know =12/6 tells Excel to divide 12 by 6
BUT what does this tell Excel: =(4*8)/(5-3)? This tells Excel to multiply 8*4 and then divide by 5-3

The thing to remember with Excel is that mathematical operations are performed in the same order as they are in algebra.
Sounds frightening - but easy to remember if you follow these rules:

• instructions within parenthesis are completed first
• Multiplication and division are performed before addition and subtraction
• Operations at the same level (example: addition and subtraction OR multiplication and division) are completed
  from left to right

Look at the first two lines below- see the difference parens make?

In the first line, Excel just moves along doing the operations.

In the second line, Excel performs the operations within the parens first. Here Excel multiplied 4*8 first and then added 15 and then divided that by the difference between 5-3.

Ready for the practice exercise? email me.
Now, you are ready for the biggie - cell references in Excel.