An Introduction and Practical Application of Calculated Columns

Calculated columns are enticing and powerful, but can be frustrating to use without some background. A starting rule of thumb is this: If it works in Excel, it will probably work in SharePoint. SharePoint, unfortunately, has a wide range of restrictions when compared to Excel, so this rule should be understood with a dose of healthy skepticism.

Some important rules and guidelines are as follows:

• Arithmetic operators supported include + (addition), - (subtraction), * (multiplication), / (division), % (percent), and ^ (exponentiation).

• Parentheses are supported in equations.

• Comparison operators supported include = (equal to), > (greater than), < (less than), >= (greater than ...

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