Lotus 123 liked formulas to start with some operand. Most people used +.

MS wanted to make it easy for people to dump Lotus 123 and use excel instead.
So MS decided to make it easier for those people.

I bet if you look at users who never used Lotus 123, they never/hardly ever use
that +. They'll use =.



Lencastre wrote:

Hello

I'm a long time MS Excel user and working with it on a daily basis, I
find myself puzzled with it sometimes.

For instance,... What is the difference when entering a formula with a
+ or an = sign?

For me it's a single keystroke to enter it with the + sign. And when I
do that sometimes it will just yield the result and overwrite the
formula like so:

+600/12

yields

50 both displayed in the cell and the cell's formula

whereas

=600/12

yields

=600/12 as the cell's formula and 50 displayed in the cell.

Any ideas?

TIA

Best regards
L.

PS: Prolly this is very newbie question to ask and prolly should
RTF(ine)M.

--

Dave Peterson