Use Excel as a Calculator

[One speaker]

[An enlarged Excel file covers the whole screen. The video’s title is displayed in the center in large font and in yellow background; it reads, “How to use Excel as a calculator”.]

Narrator: In this video I’m going to demonstrate how to use Excel as a calculator.

[Large Excel cells are displayed on screen.]

Excel is a marvelous tool, and one of the things it can do is do calculations for us. The important thing to know is how to put those calculations into Excel. The first thing is to use an equals sign [An = sign is placed in cell A1]. Whenever you want to do a calculation, always start out with an equal. The next thing is to know the different symbols that we use in Excel to indicate operations.

[A new subheader in the center is displayed in medium sized font and in yellow background; it reads, “Addition uses + Subtraction uses -”.]

Addition and subtraction use the plus and minus signs. For example, if we want to do eight plus five, we do equal, eight, plus, the symbol for plus, five and then hit Enter.

[=8+5 is inserted into cell A1. Then the narrator presses Enter in the keyboard and then only the answer, 13, appears in cell A1.]

If we want to subtract eight minus five, hit equal, eight, then a dash for minus, and five, and then Enter.

[= -8+5 is inserted into cell A2. Then the narrator presses Enter in the keyboard and then only the answer, 3, appears in cell A2.]

[A new subheader in the center is displayed in medium sized font and in yellow background; it reads, “multiplication uses*”.]

Multiplication is a little bit different in that we use the star symbol. So, eight times five would look like this, equals, eight, times five, and Enter.

[=8*5 is inserted into cell A3. Then the narrator presses Enter in the keyboard and then only the answer, 40, appears in cell A3.]

[A new subheader in the center is displayed in medium sized font and in yellow background; it reads, “division uses / ”.]

For division, we use the slash or forward slash. So, eight divided by five is, equals, eight, forward slash, five, which means eight divided by five, and hit Enter.

[=8/5 is inserted into cell A4. Then the narrator presses Enter in the keyboard and then only the answer, 1.6, appears in cell A4.]

[A new subheader in the center is displayed in medium sized font and in yellow background; it reads, “exponents use ^”.]

Excel can also do exponents. An exponent uses the little caret, or the upside down “V” symbol. Let’s do two cubed. In this case, its equals, two, and then the little caret symbol, three. This means two raised to the third power or two cubed and hit Enter.

[=2^3 is inserted into cell A5. Then the narrator presses Enter in the keyboard and then only the answer, 8, appears in cell A5.]

And that is how you perform arithmetic operations using Excel.

[End of video]