What do parentheses mean in an Excel formula?

Answer 1

Calculate the numbers in parentheses first.

****************************************

Whilst the above answer is perfectly correct - A formula in LibreOffice Calc is written within parentheses: =SUM(A1:A22) if this formula is put into A23, for example, it will show the total for A1 to A22 in A23

Answer 2

Any calculations in them are done before calculations outside of them. This can be used to change the order of operations. In this formula, the multiplication is done before the plus, because Excel follows the rules of mathematics:

=A1+A2*10

In this formula, by including parentheses, the plus is done first:

=(A1+A2)*10

You will also have parentheses in all functions, following the name of the function and containing any arguments the function needs to work, like in this SUM function, adds the values in all cells from A2 to A20:

=SUM(A2:A20)

Answer 3

All functions in formulas, like Sum or Average or Min, must have parentheses. There must be something inside them. What goes into them will depend on the particular function you are using. A lot of formulas don't need any parentheses. Some people might write a formula like this:

=Sum(A1+A2)

or

=(A1+A2)

Both will work, but it is simpler to do it as:

=A1+A2

Where you need brackets when you don't have a function, it is usually when it comes to have mixes of + - * and / in a formula. There are certain rules to how they operate. For example:

=10+2*5

If I asked you what the answer to that is, you and most people would say 60. 10 + 2 is 12 and multiply that by 5 and you get 60. Actually, that is wrong. The correct answer is 20. That is because mathematically we do the 2*5 first and then add that to 10. In mathematics, multiplications and divisions are done before additions and subtractions. It is due to what are known in maths as the laws of precedence. However, anything inside brackets is done before anything outside it. So to get that formula to give us 60, we type it like this:

=(10+2)*5

Because the + is inside the brackets, it does that first and then multiplies the result by 5.

So that is another case when we use parentheses. So we use them for functions and for adjusting precedence in formulas.

Answer 4

True