Formula Displays Rather Than Result

[paul3624]

Why is it that when I enter a formula in a cell it displays the formula rather than the results of the formula?

It's a pretty simple situation that has caused me problems in the past. I've copied a simple formula from another cell that references another cell (=+A1) and it displays the results correctly. Now if I want the reference to be say A50 and I replace A1 with A50, rather than getting what's in A50, I get =+A50 in the cell. If I just press + and drag the cursor to cell A50 I get the same result.

It's driving me nuts.

Thanks for any help.

Paul

 

[clueless007]

Perhaps you neeed to format the cell to a different format, perhaps number (See Format Menu -> Cells - . Number tab)

 

[tkroper]

Paul - good question! That happens to me sometimes and I don't understand why and it's very frustrating. Seems to me I saw a fix for this somewhere here on MrExcel so I went searching for it. Unfortunately, my search results were mostly irrelevant to the problem. I finally found a solution though, and two related posts as well:

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=240224&highlight=cell+displays+forumla+result

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=294024&highlight=Formula+contents+Display+cell

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98143&highlight=cell+displays+forumla+result

I hope this helps

 

[paul3624]

Thanks for responding. I changed to format from Text to General and it seems to have fixed it, although I still have no idea why.

Paul

 

[mgirvin]

This happens to me sometimes too. I use the keyboard shortcut for General Format (Ctrl + Shift + ~), the the the keyboard shortcut for edit mode (F2), then Enter.

All in one I just: Ctrl + Shift + ~, F2, Enter.