Entering formulas

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Entering formulas

There are several ways to enter a calculation formula in a cell. These can be combined as desired.

Tip: A short introduction to entering formulas is also provided in The PlanMaker tour.

Entering formulas manually

You can easily enter formulas manually in the desired worksheet cell.

Important: When you enter formulas directly in a worksheet cell, you must always type the equal sign (=) first, so PlanMaker knows that this will be followed by a formula and not text.

When you have entered the formula, press the Enter key to confirm your entry – or Esc to cancel it.

Alternatively, you can enter data via the following buttons of the Edit toolbar:

To accept the input, click on the function_close_icon button.

To cancel the input, click on the function_cancel_icon button.

To edit a formula later, navigate to the cell containing the formula and press the F2 key. Alternatively, double-click on the cell.

Using the mouse to enter formulas

When entering a formula, you can use the mouse to paste cell ranges or single cells into the formula. Simply drag a rectangle in the worksheet or click on the desired cell.

An example:

You want to enter the formula =SUM(B2:D4) in a cell. You can do so as follows:

1.Enter =SUM(
2.Select cells B2 to D4 with the mouse. To do so, hold down the left mouse button and drag a rectangle that starts in cell B2 and ends in cell D4.
3.When you release the mouse button, the cell address is automatically pasted into the formula. The formula now displays: =SUM(B2:D4
4.Enter the closing parenthesis ) and press the Enter key to complete the formula.

The cell will now contain the formula =SUM(B2:D4).

The command Formula | Function

If you want to use arithmetic functions in formulas, you can simply enter them.

Alternatively, you can choose the ribbon command Formula | Function function_icon. This allows you to conveniently select formulas with the mouse.

function_dialog

The dialog box for this command has the following components:

Formula field

Here, you can edit the formula that is entered in the cell.

Category

In this list, you can select the types of calculation functions to be displayed in the Function list.
In the Named ranges category at the end of the list, you can access your existing named cell ranges to insert them into formulas. For more information, see Using named ranges.

Function

This list displays all functions of the selected category. To copy a function to the Formula input field, double-click on it.

Tip: If you select a function, a short description of it is automatically displayed in the lower part of the dialog box. You can also open a help page for each function by clicking on it and then pressing the F1 key.

Operator

The most important arithmetic operators are displayed here. If you click on an operator, it will be inserted into the Formula input field.

Insert button

Click on this button to insert the contents of the Formula input field into the current cell and close the dialog box.

Close button

This button closes the dialog box without inserting the formula.