Adriane Richardson 2006 Handout: Excel—Formulas and Functions 2-10: Entering and Editing Formulas Formula: a mathematical equation ALL formulas in Excel ALWAYS begin with the equal sign (=) Operators (+, -, *, /, %, ^) 1. Select the cell 2. Type = 3. Click the cell you want to reference 4. Type the operator you want 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you’ve got the right formula 6. Press Enter Relative Referencing—Excel sees “four columns to the left” instead of just C6, so when we copy a formula, it will change it for us automatically! Absolute Referencing—to tell Excel that we want to use the same cell no matter where we copy it to, we use dollar signs in front of the column and row: $C$6 *clicking on the cell and then hitting F4 will do the same thing! Functions are high-tech formulas. They look like this: =Function Name(Argument1,Argument2,…etc.) =SUM( ) *The autosum button makes it even faster: =AVERAGE( ) =MIN( ) =MAX( ) =COUNT( )