This Ready Reference article lists and describes the operators used in Excel worksheet expressions, their order of precedence in calculation and the types of data returned by each operator in an expression.
Operator evaluation proceeds from left to right in an expression, except that evaluation of operators with a higher precedence to the right of the current operator occurs before those lower precedence operators to their left.
The table below sets out a simple list of the operators and their precedence. For more detail on the operators, how they are evaluated, the value types they work on and the errors they return, refer to the Ready Reference 4 article.
The number in the "Precedence" column below indicates relative precedence in calculation. Entries with the same number have equal precedence in calculation.
| Precedence | Operation | Operator Symbol | Symbol Name | Resul Type | Required on Left | Required on Right |
| Reference Operators | ||||||
| 8 | Range | : | Colon | Reference | Reference | Reference |
| 8 | Intersection | Space | Reference | Reference | Reference | |
| 8 | Union | , | Comma | Reference | Reference | Reference |
| 8 | Implicit Intersection | @ | At SIgn | Reference | none | Reference |
| 8 | Spill Range | # | Hash or Pound | Reference | Reference | none |
| Numeric Operators | ||||||
| 7 | Unary Negation | - | Minus Sign or Hyphen | Number | none | Number |
| 6 | Percentage | % | Percentage sign | Number | Number | none |
| 5 | Expponent | ^ | Caret | Number | Number | Number |
| 4 | Multiplication | * | Asterisk | Number | Number | Number |
| 4 | Division | / | Slash | Number | Number | Number |
| 3 | Addition | + | Plus Sign | Number | Number | Number |
| 3 | Subtraction | - | Minus Sign or Hypen | Number | Number | Number |
| Text Operator | ||||||
| 2 | Concatentation | & | Ampersand | Text String | Text String | Text String |
| Comparison Operators | ||||||
| 1 | Equality | = | Equal Sign | Logical | Any | Any |
| 1 | Inequality | <> | Left and Right Angle Brackets) | Logical | Any | Any |
| 1 | Less Than | < | Left Angle Bracket) | Logical | Any | Any |
| 1 | Less Than or Equal To | <= | Left Angle Bracket and Equal Sign) | Logical | Any | Any |
| 1 | Greater Than | > | Right Angle Bracket) | Logical | Any | Any |
| 1 | Greater Than or Equal To | >= | Right Angle Bracket and Equal Sign) | Logical | Any | Any |
Parentheses in Expressions
Parentheses can be used within an expression to force the evaluation of an expression with lower precedence, before operators with higher precedecnce are evaluated.
For example, the expression =2+1*3 will retunr 5. The expression =(2+1)*3 returns 9.
Checking Evaluation Order
If you are ever uncertain of how Excel approaches a calculation, you can use the Evaluate Formula tool from the Formulas ribbon tab (not currently available on the Mac version of Excel) to execute an expression step by step and see the order in which calculations are resolved.