What is "=+" in a reference?

[Guest]

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.

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

Nothing, it is probably because the spreadsheet was once created in Lotus
123 or the user started out with Lotus 123 and is still used to it

It won't do anything whatsoever.

 

[David Biddulph]

Relic of Lotus usage. Does nothing.

 

[Dave Peterson]

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.

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

Isn't it also that when you open a workbook in Excel originally created in
123 it will look like that?

Peo

 

[Dave Peterson]

I don't know.

It's been a very longgggggggggggg time since I used lotus 123.

But the formulas looked excel-ish if I used excel to save the file as *.wk3 and
reopened.

 

[Sandy Mann]

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

(e-mail address removed)
Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk

 

[Pete_UK]

It's not just Lotus - in Quattro Pro (and other spreadsheets) you had
to indicate that the cell was to be used for a calculation, so you
started a function with @ and you had to have an operator in front of
an operand, eg +3-2. Excel's equals sign is just the same - it tells
the spreadsheet that there is a formula in the cell rather than a
label or a number. I don't know why MS can't program Excel to get rid
of the redundant + in formulae like =+A1, because if you type in
@LEFT(A1,3) it will show this as =LEFT(A1,3).

Pete

 

[Guest]

hi.
I still use lotus at time for special function. I am not aware of lotus
using a preceeding + sign for any reason. lotus uses the @ symbol instead of
the = sign.

 

[Dave Peterson]

I'm not sure it's related to using a function.

I know I used to write my formulas (in 123) like: +a1+a2

 

[Jon Peltier]

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
_______

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

(e-mail address removed)
Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk

 

[Sandy Mann]

I never thought of that - it make sense

--
Regards,


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

(e-mail address removed)
Replace @mailinator.com with @tiscali.co.uk

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