Actually it is = that must be used.
For example =12+6 gives 18 but 12+6 gives text
I sometimes wish 12+6 would be recognized as a formula but Excel needs the =
to know that a formula is being entered
best wishes
--
Bernard V Liengme
www.stfx.ca/people/bliengme
remove caps from email

"stewart katz" <stewart wrote in message
...
Whilst excel accepts a number as positive when first entered, why when
adding
further entries in the cell do you have to enter a ' +' symbol before the
first number.

Surely it must be intuitive that this is going to be a formula, and that a
+
symbol could then be automatically programmed for.

Supercalc (which I used for many years before even Microsoft appeared )
and
Lotus 123 both had this feature, and this saved quite a lot of time and
frustration

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