What's Going On With Curly Braces

[GeyikBaba]

In an Excel 2010 spreadsheet I inherited, I am having trouble with a STDEV function returning a division by zero error.

In the formula below, I need to change the BW column to CK. When I look at the formula in a working cell in the formula window, there are curly braces at each end. As soon as I begin to type to edit the BW to CK, or even just retype BW, the curly braces go away, and I receive the division by zero error as soon as I leave the cell.

Can anyone explain this behaviour and suggest a fix?

{=STDEV(LARGE($AQ14:$BW14,ROW(INDIRECT("2:"&COUNT($AQ14:$BW14)-1))))}

Thanks
Mike Thomas

 

[Dryver14]

you need to press control shift and enter to get the formula to work

it is an array formula

 

[VoG]

Some reading http://www.cpearson.com/excel/ArrayFormulas.aspx

 

[MARK858]

It is an array formula.highlight the whole code and hold ctrl,shift and then press enter

 

[GeyikBaba]

Thanks - CTS+SHIFT, ENTER worked.

Thanks for the reading as well - I've never used array functions before.

Mike Thomas