I've seen new users who thought they had to click that big Sigma button to
start a formula. It puts =SUM() into the cell, and the user puts whatever
formula they want inside the parentheses.

- Jon
-------
Jon Peltier, Microsoft Excel MVP
Tutorials and Custom Solutions
Peltier Technical Services, Inc. - http://PeltierTech.com
_______


"Sandy Mann" wrote in message
...
My theory is that it's a hold over from users of Lotus 123

When I was at work we had a secretary who habitually wrote formulas like
that. I asked her if she originally started using Lotus and she replied,
"What is Lotus?" She said that it just felt right to write it that way.

I think that it may be related to the other thing that newcomers do in
that they tend to write =SUM(A1+B1) because they feel that you have to
coerce XL into performing a calculation.

--

Sandy
In Perth, the ancient capital of Scotland
and the crowning place of kings


Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk


"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
It irritates most excel users.

My theory is that it's a hold over from users of Lotus 123.

They used to write their formulas like:
+a1+a2

When they started using excel, they remembered that formulas start with
equal
signs. But they don't remember to remove the ones that aren't required.



j wrote:

I sometimes see other people's Excel formulas that have a reference with
=+A1

instead of
=A1

What does the plus sign do?

I can't find this anywhere.

--

Dave Peterson