How to multiply in excel

A powerful Microsoft Excel processor table processor can easily multiply any of your numbers and ranges. When can it be really useful in this regard? There are many options:

• At hand there is no calculator.
• Numerous ranges of numbers are multiplied, and it is necessary to see which numbers are involved, and maybe to replace some of them (in an ordinary calculator without the function of saving a line, you'll have to start the calculation again).
• Multiplication is only part of the compound formula.

As you can see, multiplication in Excel is not a superfluous thing. Without the operation of multiplication, not a single formula can be dispensed with.

Multiplication options in Excel

"Excel" allows you to multiply one by one:

• Specific numbers (positive, negative, integer, fractional).
• The numbers from the indicated cells.
• Ranges of numbers.
• Boolean values

How is multiplication carried out? The multiplication formula in Excel begins with the equal sign (=). As in any formula, one or more numbers (or links to cells containing them) are indicated, followed by an asterisk (*). Such a formula would look like this: "= 0.22 * -5 * 16" (when specific numbers are multiplied), or "= G4 * I5" (when cell references are specified as arguments). This is the first variant of multiplication.

The multiplication formula in Excel can be written using the built-in "WORK" function:

The advantage of using this particular function to perform multiplication in Excel is the possibility of multiplying one another not only by numbers but also by ranges.

Let us turn to the concrete examples.

Multiplication with an asterisk

Try the following examples on the Excel worksheet:

With them you will see that it is very easy to produce multiplication in Excel. Note that the result of multiplying the logical values is 0 (FALSE) or 1 (TRUE).

The only drawback of this method of multiplication is that it can not accept a range of numbers as an argument. Surely the maximum for which any user suffices will be determined somewhere at the end of the second dozens of numbers or cells sorted in order and alternating with the asterisk signs.

The only way to get around this drawback is to use the "WORK" function.

Multiplication with the function "WORK"

Consider how to make multiplication in Excel using the built-in function.

In the Excel workbook, create a similar tablet and check the examples on it. In one column, add several values, in the other column, also enter several values. Try to apply the "WORK" function to your bands, and also multiply manually by means of an asterisk.

In the "Formula" column of this table it is clearly shown that if the ranges of values stand side by side, then they can be used as one range. And also according to the table, you can see that the function "WORK" multiplied all the numbers of the specified ranges, and the result is the same as if we manually multiply the values from the given cells one at a time. As you can see, multiplication in Excel is not difficult.

Interesting fact! Try now to remove one value from any cell in the range, let the cell become completely empty. You will see that in doing so, the MESSAGE function performed the calculation simply by releasing an empty cell. But the result of the "manual" multiplication turned to zero. This is another obvious advantage of the built-in function before the multiplication by an asterisk - it does not take empty cells as zero, it just releases them from the calculation.

There are situations when calculations are made on several worksheets of the book, and the final sheet includes a formula that includes the product of values from other sheets. If at least one of them is unfilled, a simple multiplication with an asterisk will turn all your results to zero.

From this it can be concluded that when conducting complex calculations on several sheets, it is better to use the "WORK" function as a priority.

Multiplication table

Let's see in the end how to create a multiplication table in Excel. It's quite simple.

In the traditions of standard multiplication tables, we will add one set of numbers to the column, and one row to another. To be able to copy formulas, you need to use mixed links - to fix with the dollar sign ($) the column number with vertically arranged data and lines with horizontally arranged data: "= $ A2 * B $ 1".