BODMAS

Hello Clare

Thank you for your question and welcome to the forum.

It's difficult to give a short, simple example of BODMAS as it is a concept that requires a bit of explanation. Here's my attempt anyway.

BODMAS is an acronym to help you remember which order Excel will actually figure out the answer to a formula, in cases where a formula is performing more than one operation. For example, you might have a formula that is used to add together a list of expenses, then divide the expenses between several different departments - so you have an addition and a division as part of one formula.

B stands for brackets (any part of the formula in brackets will be calculated first)
O stands for operators, which you're unlikely to use in Excel formulas, so don't need to worry about this too much
D is for division
M for multiplication
A for addition
S for subtraction

So for example in the formula
=A1+A2+A3/B1

Excel would divide what is in A3 by what is in B1 first; then add the numbers in cells A1 and A2 to the answer it got from doing the division. This is because according to BODMAS, division is done before addition.

So if this was the formula you were using to divide up expenses, it would give you the wrong answer if the formula was put together as shown above.

However if the formula was
=(A1+A2+A3)/B1

then Excel would add together your expenses in A1, A2 and A3 first; then divide this result by the number is cell B1 - because according to BODMAS whatever is inside brackets will be done first before anything else - division, in this case.

Kind regards
Amanda