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Operators in Office Calc

You can use the following operators in Office Calc:

Arithmetic Operators

These operators return numeric results.

Operator Name Example
+ (Plus) Addition 1+1
- (Minus) Subtraction 2-1
- (Minus) Negation -5
* (asterisk) Multiplication 2*2
/ (Slash) Division 9/3
% (Percent) Percent 15%
^ (Caret) Exponentiation 3^2

Prefix "-" (negation) has a higher precedence than "^" (exponentiation). For example -3^2 equals 9, which is the square of a negative number.

Comparative operators

These operators return either true or false.

Operator Name Example
= (equal sign) Equal A1=B1
> (Greater than) Greater than A1>B1
< (Less than) Less than A1<b1< p=""> </b1<>
>= (Greater than or equal to) Greater than or equal to A1>=B1
<= (Less than or equal to) Less than or equal to A1<=B1
<> (Inequality) Inequality A1<>B1

Text operators

The operator combines separate text strings into one text string.

Operator Name Example
& (And) text concatenation AND "Sun" & "day" is "Sunday"

Reference operators

These operators return a cell range of zero, one or more cells.

Range has the highest precedence, then intersection, and then finally union.

Operator Name Example
: (Colon) Range A1:C108
! (Exclamation mark) Intersection SUM(A1:B6!B5:C12) Calculates the sum of all cells in the intersection; in this example, the result yields the sum of cells B5 and B6.
~ (Tilde) Concatenation or union Takes two references and returns a reference list, which is a concatenation of the left reference followed by the right reference. Double entries are referenced twice. See note below this table.

Reference concatenation using a tilde character was implemented lately. When a formula with the tilde operator exists in a document that is opened in old versions of the software, an error is returned. A reference list is not allowed inside an array expression.