I am having trouble using a function of my Excel 97 Spreadsheet. I would like to calculate projected earnings on an investment, using a compound interest formula. I have found such a formula in Excel 97. But when I try it out, it does not produce any result. The accrued interest (in the 1900 date system) is: ‘ACCRINT(”2/28/93″,”8/31/93″,”5/1/93″,0.1,1000,2,0) equals 16.94444.’ When I copy this into a spreadsheet cell, I do not get an answer. The spreadsheet simply returns a cell full of hashes. I have tried various permutations of the dates, with and without inverted commas, and in American and Australian date order. I wonder if you can help with this problem.

I have not been able to find an ‘ACCRINT’ in Excel. There is, however a way to make a compound interest formula in Excel that works. In the following equation replace P with the principle amount of money invested, R with the rate of interest using the following equation (1+ r/100), and finally replace N with the number of years of the investment.
=P*POWER(R,N)
For example, where P is 2500, R is 1.006, and N is 6
=2500*POWER(1.006,6)
this equals 2591.32 from which you subtract the (principle) initial investment of 2500 and get the remainder (interest) which is $91.32