Hello. I'm a 1-2-3 user who is trying to become familiar with Excel. I
have a very basic question, and would appreciate any help from
experienced users.

In 1-2-3, if one opens a sheet and enters "4*5" the cell will show "20".
Entering "10/2" will yield "5". But in Excel, even if the cells are
specifically formatted as Number, it seems to be necessary to put "=" in
front, so that one has to enter "=4*5" or "=10/2". Since the equal sign
is in only one place and not on the extended numeric keyboard, I have to
think that there's another way to do this.

So, the question is whether it is really necessary to add "=" before an
arithmetic operation, or is there an alternative?