Why push the @ operator?

Question

Why, oh why did MS find it necessary to push the @ operator into some formulae? A simple explanation would have been much more helpful; now I have to edit the "@" out of many formulae so that they spill as originally intended.

Thanks Microsoft. Not!

Answer 1

You may check this link. If your file is opened from an old Excel version which doesn't support Dynamic array formulas, it may add a "@" sign on your formula.

https://superuser.com/questions/1525270/why-have-at-symbols-suddenly-appeared-in-my-excel-formulae

Answer 2

Here's what I found when I opened the file that was reported to be no longer working:

And here's what it should look like:

Yes, it may be the the file was opened in an older version of Excel (I have no idea what version(s) may have been used). If so, is that where the "@" came from? How, and why?

Answer 3

Implicit intersection logic reduces many values to a single value. Excel did this to force a formula to return a single value, since a cell could only contain a single value. If your formula was returning a single value, then implicit intersection did nothing (even though it was technically being done in the background). 

Implicit intersection operator: @ - Microsoft Support

Could you share a screenshot of your issue? It could be someone opened that file from an old Excel version which makes formula corrupt.