Who would would possibly know why they did it this way? What's the point of
wasting time speculating about WHY?

You have a problem to solve. I would think your time would be better spent
on that aspect. Fundamentally, you need to add parentheses to an expression
like -X^2 so it becomes -(X^2).

It is VERY unlikely this will be changed. It could "break" existing
spreadsheet formulas that have been written to accommodate Excel's
calculation order.


"Atreides" <atreides1AThotmailD0Tcom wrote in message
...
Why? Because that's the way they wrote it.

Why is the sky blue? Because. ;)

I was hoping for something more informative than this. e.g.
1. This convention was considered more intuitive to the majority of
expected
users.
2. Computer programmers live in their own world and have their own
conventions.
3. Other...

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.

Thanks
Peter