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title: "Formulas" sidebar_position: 1

Formulas

What you type

Typing replaces the active cell, as in Google Sheets. 012 decides what the entry is the way Sheets does:

You type	You get
Rent, Q3 total	text
42, -3.5, 1,234, 1e3	a number
$1,200, 12%	a number with currency or percent format
9/26/2026, 2026-09-26, Sep 26, 2026, 14:30, 2pm	a date or time (a serial number with a date or time format)
TRUE, false	a boolean
=A1*2, +A1*2	a formula
'42	text, even though it looks like a number

That's in English (United States); in another locale numbers, currency and dates are typed its way (1.234,5, 12,50 €, 26.09.2026 in German), and formulas with a decimal comma separate their arguments with ;: =ROUND(A1*1,19; 2).

A formula that doesn't parse isn't accepted: 012 stays in EDIT mode with the caret on the problem and says what's wrong on the context line, e.g. Expected , or ) in SUM.

Operators

+ - * / ^ for arithmetic, & to join text, = <> < > <= >= to compare (giving TRUE or FALSE), % after a number divides by 100. Unary minus binds tighter than ^ as in Sheets and Excel, so =-2^2 is 4. 1-2-3's #AND#, #OR# and #NOT# still work; AND(), OR() and NOT() are the Sheets way.

Numbers are binary floating point, as in Sheets and Excel, and follow Sheets where that shows:

• Comparisons, and criteria such as COUNTIF's, look at the 15 significant digits a cell shows, so =0.1+0.2=0.3 is TRUE. A difference itself keeps every digit: =0.1+0.2-0.3 is 5.551E-17 (decimal arithmetic makes it 0).
• A number written in a formula keeps 15 significant digits: =123456789012345678 is 123456789012345000.
• A negative number has odd roots: =(-8)^(1/3) and =POWER(-8, 1/3) are -2; other fractional powers of it are #NUM!.

Values and errors

Text in arithmetic is #VALUE! unless it reads as a number (="3"*2 is 6); blanks count as 0 or empty text. A condition (IF, IFS, AND, OR, NOT) also reads the text TRUE or FALSE, and empty text as FALSE, so =IF("TRUE", 1, 2) is 1. Aggregates such as SUM over a range skip text; COUNT skips errors too and COUNTA counts them, where the others give the first error in the range. Errors use Sheets' codes:

Error	Meaning
#DIV/0!	division by zero
#VALUE!	the wrong kind of value, e.g. text in arithmetic
#NAME?	an unknown name
#REF!	a reference to deleted cells, or a circular reference: every cell of the cycle, even one whose formula catches errors (IFERROR) or skips them (COUNTIF), and one reached only through an IF branch not taken or a part of a range the formula doesn't read (INDEX, VLOOKUP), as in Sheets
#N/A	not available, e.g. a lookup found nothing
#NUM!	a number out of range, e.g. SQRT(-1), or a position outside what CHOOSE, INDEX or MID reads from, as in Sheets (Excel says #VALUE! or #REF!)

Error cells are red with a curly underline, and the context line explains the active cell's error and where it came from, e.g. #DIV/0! From B3: division by zero in B5/0, or names the chain of a circular reference. An explanation longer than the line stops at the last sentence that fits, with … and an F1 chip at the right: F1 shows the whole of it in a box beside the cell, and any key closes it. F1 on a cell without an error shows the keyboard shortcuts.

Regular expressions

REGEXMATCH, REGEXEXTRACT and REGEXREPLACE use Go's regular expressions, which are RE2, as Sheets' are: the same patterns mean the same thing. They take text only: a number is #VALUE!, as in Sheets (A1&"" makes one text). REGEXEXTRACT returns the first capture group, or the whole match without one, and spills several groups across; REGEXREPLACE writes a group in the replacement as $1. SPLIT spills the pieces of a text across, reading those that look like numbers as numbers.

More

Page	For
References	Cells, ranges, names, other sheets, and a range where one value is wanted
Building formulas	Pointing, suggestions, argument hints
Tracing formulas	Precedents and dependents in the grid, and a formula evaluated step by step
Arrays and spills	FILTER, SORT, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE, ARRAYFORMULA, LET and LAMBDA
Decimal arithmetic	Exact decimal math for money
JEV functions	Asking a hosted model from formulas
Functions	Every function, generated from the engine