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you may already have some experience
creating simple formulas that have only
one type of operation but sometimes you
have to create more complex formulas
that do have more than one Operator for
example addition and multiplication to
do this correctly you'll need to
understand how Excel is calculating the
answer when solving formulas Excel uses
a set of rules called the order of
operations which you might remember from
math class the order of operations
determines the order in which the
formula will be calculated so you know
exactly how to write it out the first
thing that's calculated are any
equations in parentheses then if you
have any exponents you'll calculate
those next is multiplication and
division and finally addition and
subtraction Excel knows to use the order
of operations whenever it calculates a
complex formula it's important that you
remember it so you can create formulas
that will give you the correct answer to
remember the order you can just use the
acronym PEMDAS or to make it even easier
remember the phrase please excuse my
dear Aunt Sally let's take a closer look
at some examples in this formula 5 plus
2 is in parentheses so we'll calculate
that first to get 7 and then we can just
multiply 3 times 7 to get 21 this
formula
contains an exponent 3 ^ 2 we'll need to
calculate that first and then we can do
the addition if you have multiplication
or division that will come next here we
multiply 2 times 4 to get 8 and 9 minus
8 equals 1 now multiplication and
division are considered to be on the
same level that means if you have both
of them in your formula they're
calculated from left to right in this
example we'll do the division first and
then the multiplication if we wanted the
multiplication to happen first we could
just put it in parentheses or we could
rearrange the formula so the
multiplication was on the left finally
we have addition and subtraction just
like multiplication and division these
are on the same level so we'll calculate
them from left to right ok now let's put
them all together this formula may look
really complicated but we're just going
to go step by step through the order of
operations and you'll see that it's
really not that bad we'll start with the
parentheses we'll calculate each of
these to get 2 and 3 and as you can see
the formulas already starting to look a
bit simpler next we'll look to see if
there are any exponents in this formula
there is 1 2 to the 2nd power when we
calculate it it becomes 4 next we'll do
the multiplication and division going
from left to right and now all that's
this addition and that gives us our
answer which is eight point seven five
and that's the same answer Excel would
give you if you entered that formula in
your worksheet now I'm going to show you
why it's so important that you follow
the order of operations every time if
you don't your formulas won't give you
the correct answer in this example I'd
like to add these three values and find
out how much the sales tax will be I'll
start by typing the equal sign which is
how you always start a formula then I'll
calculate D 3 + d 4 + D 5 next I'll
multiply by point zero seven five which
is the tax rate at seven point five
percent now this may look like it's
going to give us the correct answer but
it's not that's because we didn't follow
the order of operations remember
multiplication comes before addition
so excel is going to multiply D five by
point zero seven five first then it will
add d3 and d4 which isn't what we want
we want these three values to be added
first so to do that we just need to put
them in parentheses parentheses are
often the best way of controlling which
parts of the formula are calculated
first and when this formula is
calculated we can see that the answer is
20 dollars and 56 cents writing complex
formulas really isn't that difficult
once you know how they work just
remember to use the order of operations
and you'll get the correct answer every
time
you