Forum Discussion
THERE'S A PROBLEM WITH THIS FORMULA
Yes, as everyone mentioned here, best to start formula with =. Most reliable.
However, from time to time I prefer to use Numpad only, thus formulae start with +. Especially if we use Excel as calculator. No problems on Excel for Web. On Excel desktop, as mentioned,
In general that's 30-years old question, lot of answers could be found.
It appears you have run into something interesting. So an equation can be preceeded with EITHER "=" or "+" EXCEPT when you start with a "+" it appears to convert any fraction to an explicit number so:
+1/2*3+4-5*6/3
will result in:
=0.5 * 3 + 4 - 5 * 2
Notice how the 1/2 and the 6/3 are converted to 0.5 and 2 respectively.
I don't know why but to your question excel sees the fraction 1/17 (it doesn't see 17.5 as a valid denominator and only uses whole number denominators) and tries to convert it to a number and then appending .5 (it becomes or tries to become =0.0588235294117647 .5 which is 2 numbers without an operator in between) which creates an error. I don't know why it does this but that appears to be what is happening. Furthermore if you have multiple "/" in a row it will act on 'groups' as they are viewed as separate fractions but not further simplify the resulting fraction so +8/4/2/8 becomes =2/0.25 (the 8/4 becomes 2 and the 2/8 becomes 0.25). Also note that having a decimal for a numerator is OK in the sense that excel will NOT convert it so +2.2/2 will result in the formula =2.2/2
As noted by Hans, you are just better off using "=" instead of "+" to preserve your original entry