Hi, it's Jason.
I've put together four short videos aimed at beginners to show you how to create formulas
in Excel.
In this first video, I'll give you a rundown of some basic maths you're going to need if
you're going to use Excel and demonstrate how to create simple formulas.
Here's a really quick rundown of the basic mathematics in Excel.
So you have for main operators - plus and minus, multiply and divide.
Here's a quick example of each.
So if we go to a cell here and we want to add, say, two and three together, you've got
to start with equals, that's what makes it a formula.
You then type two plus three.
So the plus is just a straightforward symbol and that's how you add two numbers together.
To subtract two numbers or to minus one number from the other, you say Equals, let's say,
ten minus five.
OK, so straightforward dash or the minus symbol for subtraction.
Now multiply it is a little bit different.
You can't use the x.
You need to use asterix.
So let's say you want to multiply three and four together, you'd say Equals three multiplied
by four.
And notice I've used the asterisk there is the multiply symbol.
Enter to get your answer.
Now, divide in the same way, there's no traditional divide symbol on the keyboard, so you have
to use the slash key.
That's the slash that's on the question mark key, not the backslash which sits above Enter.
So let's say you want to divide twelve by four, you'd say Equals twelve divided by four.
So they're have four main symbols.
You always need to use those.
What I've done so far is I've just used two's and three's and four's, those kinds of things.
In reality, you can have some numbers already on your spreadsheet and you want to do something
with them.
So let's say over here I've got, say, two numbers and I want to add them together.
So what I do here is I start again with Equals.
What I'm now going to do is to take the mouse and click on the first number and you'll see
the cell reference, C1, has been added into the formula.
Now a lot of people, even those that have been using Excel for a lot of years, type
in their cell reference.
Now, that's really bad practice for two reasons.
So first of all you might misread the cell and secondly you might mistype of the cell.
So it's open to lots of errors when you do that.
So always take the mouse and click on the cell that you want to use.
You then type a plus sign or whatever else you want to do, take the mouse again and click
on the second cell, so it's C1 plus C2 in this case, and when you press Enter, that's
your total.
Now the beautiful thing about formulas is that if one of the two original values changes,
your total also changes down here.
So if I change this one to something else and press Enter, I get a brand new total down
here because the formula is always picking up whatever it is in C1 and C2 or whichever
two cells you picked.
Now, a little pitfall here to watch out for.
So I'm just going to double-click the cell to bring back to the formula.
Let's say I'm at this point and I click C2 to add the second cell reference in, so there's
is my second reference C2, but a lot of people make the mistake then of just coming over
here somewhere and clicking to kind of get out of the way.
And what it does is it replaces the second cell reference with what you've just clicked,
so don't ever fall into that trap.
Once you've got your finished formula, press Enter and then you can safely move to the
next place.
Let's do another quick example.
So let's say you have a starting budget of $500 and then we have a few deductions.
So maybe your bills are $100, maybe your food is two hundred and fifty, maybe a kids want
a few bucks.
Whatever you deductions are, what we're going to do is to take these three values off of
500.
So the formula here is Equals.
I'm going to kick the 500, that's my starting point.
And then this time I'm going to subtract the first deduction, then subtract the second
deduction, and then subtract the third deduction.
So with each figure I've clicked on the cell in question, I put minus signs between each
of those and when you press Enter, that's the balance that's left over after deducting
those three things.
So that's the basics.
In the next video I'm going to show you how to introduce a function into your formulas,
which makes the process a bit easier, especially when you've got a lot more numbers to work
with.
So if that sounds useful to you, head across the next video, I'll put the link on this
page and I'll see you there.