"Atreides" <atreides1AThotmailD0Tcom wrote...
....
I was hoping for something more informative than this. e.g.
1. This convention was considered more intuitive to the majority of
expected users.
....

Perhaps now, but not necessarily back when spreadsheets made their big debut
in the mid 1980s. FWLIW, this is COBOL's sign convention, and maybe it
wasn't unreasonable for Microsoft's original Excel programmers to decide
that it'd be a good idea to follow COBOL operator precedence.

Then again, Lotus 123 follows standard mathematical conventions and gives
exponentiation higher precedence than unary minus (sign change), so
Microsoft's original programmers gave Excel a different operator precedence
convention than the leading spreadsheet on the market back when they were
developing the original version of Excel. That alone makes it VERY LIKELY
this was a design screw-up, but once made it can't be unmade because it'd
break existing formulas relying on current operator precedence.

If you really believe you want to read about this, follow these archived
threads.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...214f129ec55664

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...fc5978cbbd95a8


And no, there's no way to change this.

Perhaps this should be included in the next version of Excel. Some other
options can be changed with regards to the calculations (by going to
"Tools", "Options", "Calculation"). This would be quite a useful feature.

Don't count on this happening. Excel's formula parser, in which its operator
precedence is implemented, seems to be one of the oldest, most myopically
designed bits of code in all of Excel. If Microsoft hasn't made any
fundamental changes since Excel 4 (3D referencing within .XLW workbooks),
over a decade ago, why would you believe they have any inclination to fix
this any time soon?

Also, flipping operator precedence on the fly would require a different
formula parser of every possible operator precedence combination. That'd add
considerable bulk to the Excel .EXE - not a good thing.