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Math in Google Sheets and Excel

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Lucky
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Google Sheets and Excel are two programs that allow you to calculate math quickly with programming. And the process is simple!

Creating Formulas

If you want to create a formula, first you type the equal symbol (=) into a cell. This signifies that you are starting a formula.

Accessing Cells

To access the contents of another cell, you will have to first start the formula (using the = symbol), and type in the name of the cell. The name of the cell is the letter and number that correspond to it. For example, if you would like to access the cell in the letter B and number 1 column, you would refer to it as B1.

If you want a cell to be equivalent to the contents of B1, you would put in “=B1”, making the cell contents equivalent to what is in B1.

Math in Google Sheets

Using the cell name, you can now start doing math in Google Sheets or Excel. Begin with an empty spreadsheet to begin. First, type in “5” in cell A1. Then, type “6” in cell A2. In any other cell, type in “=” to start the formula. Next, type in “A1+A2”. Now, the cell with the formula should display the sum of A1 and A2.

With multiplication, you can replace the + symbol with an asterisk (*). An asterisk is used in multiple coding languages, to signify multiplication. The same is true for Google Sheets and Excel. If you replace “+” with “*”, you will see that A1 and A2 now multiply with each other.

With division, you can replace the + symbol with a slash (/). Now, it will divide 5 by 6, using the contents of A1 and A2.

For Subtraction, you can replace the + symbol with a subtraction symbol (-).

Tip: Cell names in spreadsheets can be replaced with numbers if you are doing other kinds of mathematics. If you want to multiply Cell A1 by 4, you can set your cell to “=4*A1”.

Uses of Mathematics in Excel and Google Sheets

Most people and companies that use Excel and Google Sheets, use it for its capabilities with mathematics. Besides mathematics, formulas allow you to do various other things on Google Sheets and Excel. You can even import data from other websites into these programs.

With simple math like this, you can do many things. If you own a business, you can create a spreadsheet that calculates the total price for a list of products. If someone buys a specific amount of an item, it will change the total price spent on that product. In the end, it could calculate the total price of all of the products in total. You can also use these programs to budget. You can calculate the total price of multiple products, and use formulas to calculate how much money is left. The opportunities are endless.

For more information about Mathematics in Google Sheets and Excel, you can view the official documentation for Microsoft Excel, and Google Sheets. You can do so much more than just math in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets using this documentation.

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