Exponents in Excel Formula

Exponents in excel is the same exponential function in excel such as in mathematics where a number is raised to a power or exponent of another number, exponents are used by two methods one is by using the power function in excel worksheet which takes two arguments one as the number and another as the exponent or we can use the exponent symbol from the keyboard.

How to Use Exponents in Excel Formula?

The following are the methods with which Exponents in excel formula can be used.

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Method #1 – Using the Power Function

Here let’s learn how to use the power function in excel. It is one of the functions/formulas available in excel.

Like other formulas, the power formula also should start with the “=” sign.

The formula of the Power function is.

Number: It is the base number.
Power: It is the exponent.

Below are the simple examples of using the power function.

The result is shown below.

The first row has the base number of 6 and exponent as 3 which is 6 x6 x 6 and the result is 216 which can be derived using a power function in excel.

In the formula, the base number and the exponents can be used directly instead of the cell reference. (As shown in the example below).

Here in the first row 5 is multiplied twice i.e. 5 x 5.

The result is 25.

This power function can be used to find out the Square root, Cube root or nth root of the number. The exponents used to find the square root is (1/2), the cube root is (1/3) and the nth root is (1/n). The nth number means any given number. Below given are a few examples.

In this table, the first row has the base number like 49 which is the square root of 7 (7 x 7) and 125 is the cube root of 5 (5 x5 x5) and 244 is the 6^th root of 2.5 (2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5 x 2.5).

The results are given below.

Given below is the example of using the excel cell reference for square root in excel and cube root.

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The output column shows the results.

The first row in the above table is finding the square root, the second row is for cube root and the third row is the nth root of the number.

Method #2 – Using Base Power

Using the “Caret” symbol, the power function can be applied using the Base number and exponent. It is a shorthand used for the power function.

You can find this caret symbol in the keyboard in Number 6 key (^). Hold Shift along with 6 to use this symbol. Apply the formula “=Base ^ Exponent”.

As explained above in the previous examples of a Power function, the formula using the caret can be applied to take the cell references or by entering the base number and the exponent with a caret.

The below table shows the example of using cell references with (^).

The result is shown below:

Using the base number and exponent using (^) is shown in the below table.

The result is shown below:

The caret operator can be used in finding out the square root, cube root, and nth root of the number where the exponents are (1/2), (1/3), (1/n). [As shown in the below tables].

Table 1:

Now the result is shown below:

Table 2:

Now the result is shown below:

Method #3 – Using EXP Function

Another way of calculating the exponent is by using the function EXP. This is one of the functions in excel.

The syntax of the formula is.

Here the number refers to “e” the base number and exponent is the given number. It is e to the power of a given number. Here “e” is the constant value which is 2.718. So, the value of e will be multiplied with the times of exponent (given number).

Here you can see that the number given in the formula is 5 which means the value of “e” ie., 2.718 is multiplied 5 times and the result is 148.413.

Method #4 – Using Text-Based Exponents

To write or express the exponents, we need to use text-based exponents. To do this,

Step 1 – Select the cells where you want to input the exponent’s value. Change the format of the selected cells to “Text”.

This can be done either by selecting the cells and choosing the Text option from the dropdown list in the “Home” tab under the “Number” section or right click on the selected cells and select the “Format Cells” option to select the Text option under “Number” tab.

Step 2 – Now enter both Base number and Exponent in the cell next to next without any space

Select the exponent number only (as shown below).

Step 3 – Right-click on the cell and select Formal cells option.

Step 4 – In the pop-up window, check the box for Superscript in excel under the Effects category. Hit OK.

(In Excel, we have an option called superscript or subscript to show the mathematical values or formulas).

Step 5 – Click Enter and you can see the result as below.

All these are examples of how Exponents can be expressed in Excel. This text-based mode of showing the exponents can also be used for showing other mathematical formulas or values.

Below shown is the ways the exponents can be used in Excel formula

Things to Remember

Whenever the number is shown as Base to the power of the exponent, it will be shown as text only and this cannot be considered for any numerical calculations
When the exponent given in a formula is a large number, the result shown will be in scientific or exponential notation. (Example: =10^100 gives the result as 1E+100)
Superscript (to the power of) is an option available in Excel to express the exponents and other mathematical formulas
In Excel functions, adding the spaces between the values doesn’t make any difference. So you can add a space in between the digits for easy readability.

Exponents in Excel