Excel result not formula - Word и Excel - помощь в работе с программами

Select cell, equal sign, type formula, enter. Now it’s one thing to write a formula that triggers an error, but to see the formula do nothing?

How do you fix something that isn’t doing anything?

It might not look so wrong but there is definitely something wrong when a formula doesn’t return a result and just… sits there.

Problem

The problem we are looking at here is a formula being entered but excel shows the formula itself instead of returning a result like so:

As you can see, there is nothing wrong with the formula (if there was, an error would show up, not the formula itself).

This happens when Excel doesn’t process the formula as a formula. Excel doesn’t evaluate it and displays the formula itself. Luckily, there aren’t too many things that could have gone wrong here so there isn’t a need to panic or delete or overwrite cells. There are a few reasons the formula shows up in place of the result and there’s an easy fix for each. Let’s dive into them.

Recommended Reading: How to Lock and Hide Formulas in Excel

Potential Issue 1 – ‘Show Formulas’ Option is Enabled

The Show Formulas feature displays all the formulas used on the sheet instead of the results of the formulas. Your sheet, which would normally look something like this:

Will look like this with Show Formulas enabled.

Widened columns with all your formulas skinned to bare the bones.

This is a favorable option for the 1-step ease of seeing all the formulas on the worksheet so you don’t have to individually select each cell and check the formula. As for the problem we are looking at right now, this option can cause confusion especially if it’s not what you need.

If it’s not what you need and you didn’t enable it yourself then how come it’s causing trouble? It may have accidentally been enabled as the keyboard shortcut for Show Formulas is Ctrl + `. It’s quite an easy mistake to make.

If you doubt that this is what has happened, you can check Show Formulas in the Formulas tab.

Indeed Show Formulas is enabled.

Bear in mind that this is a full worksheet feature. If all the formulas on the sheet are being displayed and that is the problem in question, the Show Formulas option needs to be addressed. If the problem is limited to one formula, Show Formulas is not your problem.

What’s the fix?

The fix is as easy as the problem itself. You can either press Ctrl + `. This is a toggle shortcut for Show Formulas and will also switch the option off.

The other way is to hit the Show Formulas button in the Formulas tab.

Both methods will disable Show Formulas.

Potential Issue 2 – Cell is Formatted as ‘Text’

The problem is the same but the reason is different. The formula is entered but the formula is displayed instead of the result. A cell in an Excel worksheet can have many formats and the default format of all cells in a new sheet is General (which would not cause this problem). Hence, a possible reason could be that the cell in which the formula is entered is formatted as Text.

What’s the fix?

The fix to this problem is to change the formatting to General. Here are the steps to do this:

In the Home tab, in the Number section, there is a drop-down menu for cell formatting. Click the arrow to access the drop-down menu. Alternatively, right-click the cell to open the right-click context menu and select Format Cells option from the menu.

Select General.

Click on the formula bar (or double-click the cell) and press the Enter key.

For this case, cell formatting will be prospective. The reason for editing the formula is that formatting the cell to General will not have any impact on the cell’s existing contents.

Similarly, if you already had the result of your formula and later the cell is formatted to Text, it will not change to the formula in text. This implies that the Text format must have been applied before the formula was entered, making the formula appear as text.

Potential Issue 3 – Excel Thinks the Formula is a Text

How strange of Excel to think so but there are some very valid reasons for this. Let’s see some of them below:

a. Apostrophe Before the Formula

You might be aware of the fact the whenever you add an apostrophe at the start in any cell, Excel considers the cell content as text. This is applicable to any data type like numbers, date-times, and even to formulas.

The apostrophe is proving to be quite a bug for us today.

While this treatment may be useful in some cases, it’s a hindrance when you’re trying to get the formula to work.

b. Equal Sign Missing or Space Before the Equal Sign

Excel recognizes and evaluates a formula when it has an equal sign in the beginning. Therefore, the lack of it will not persuade Excel to calculate it and the contents will be treated as text to be displayed as they are.

A space character before the equal sign will have a similar effect; since the first character of the formula will not be an equal sign, Excel will not evaluate it as a formula.

c. Formula Wrapped in Quotes

Many times while writing formulas online (on blogs or forums) people wrap them inside quotes to make them stand out. And when you try to use the same formula along with the quotes they do not work as expected.

The reason behind this is that anything that is wrapped within quotes is treated as a text by Excel and hence it does not evaluate such formulas.

Note: Please note that you are allowed to use quotes within the formulas, but using the quotes to wrap the entire formula makes excel think it is a text string and hence will not be evaluated.

What’s the fix?

In all the above cases there is a simple fix – just edit the formula and make sure it starts with an equals sign and not with apostrophes, quotes, or unnecessary spaces.

That’s all folks! Next time you’re faced with the predicament of your formula staring at you in the face, you’ll know how to work things around it. Signing off!

Источник

Every once in a while, you might find Excel behaving in a bizarre or unexpected way. One example is when you accidentally trigger the scroll lock feature. Another example is when one or more formulas suddenly stops working. Instead of a result, you see only a formula, as in the screen below:

The VLOOKUP formula is correct, why no result?

This can be very confusing, and you might think you’ve somehow broken your spreadsheet. However, it’s likely a simple problem. With a little troubleshooting, you can get things working again. There are two main reasons you might see a formula instead of a result:

You accidentally enabled Show Formulas
Excel thinks your formula is text

I’ll walk through each case with some examples.

Show Formulas is enabled

Excel has a feature called Show Formulas that toggles the display of formula results and actual formulas. Show Formulas is meant to give you a quick way to see all formulas in a worksheet. However, if you accidentally trigger this mode, it can be quite disorienting. With Show Formulas enabled, columns are expanded, and every formula in a worksheet is displayed with no results anywhere in sight, as shown below.

Show Formulas disabled (normal mode)

Show Formulas enabled

To check if Show Formulas is turned on, visit the Formula tab in the ribbon and check the Show Formulas button:

Show Formulas enabled — just click to disable

The reason Show Formulas can be accidentally enabled is because it has a keyboard shortcut (Control +`) that a user might accidentally type. Try typing Control + ` in a worksheet to see how it works. You should see formulas toggled on and off each time you use the shortcut.

Show Formulas toggles the display of every formula in a worksheet. If you are having trouble with a single formula, the problem isn’t Show Formulas. Instead, Excel probably thinks the formula is text. Read on for more information.

Excel thinks your formula is text

If Excel thinks a formula is just text, and not an actual formula, it will simply display the text without trying to evaluate it as a formula. There are several situations that might cause this behavior.

No equal sign

First, you may have forgotten the equal sign. All formulas in Excel must begin with an equal sign (=). If you leave this out, Excel will simply treat the formula as text:

Broken formula example — no equal sign (=)

Space before equal sign

A subtle variation of this problem can occur if there is one or more spaces before the equal sign. A single space can be hard to spot, but it breaks the rule that all formulas must start with an equal sign, so it will break the formula as shown below:

Formula wrapped in quotes

Finally, make sure the formula is not wrapped in quotes. Sometimes, when people mention a formula online, they will use quotes, like this:

"=A1"

In Excel, quotes are used to signify text, so the formula will not be evaluated, as seen below:

Note: you are free to use quotes inside formulas. In this case, the formula above requires quotes around criteria.

In all of the examples above, just edit the formula so it begins with an equal sign and all should be well:

For reference, here is the working formula:

=SUMIFS(D5:D9,E5:E9,">30")

Cell format set to Text

Finally, every once in a while, you might see a formula that is well-formed in every way, but somehow does not display a result. If you run into a formula like this, check to see if the cell format is set to Text.

If so, set the format to General, or another suitable number format. You may need to enter cell edit mode (click into the formula bar, or use F2, then enter) to get Excel to recognize the format change. Excel should then evaluate as a formula.

Tip — Save formula in progress as text

Although a broken formula is never fun, you can sometimes use the «formula as text problem» to your advantage, as a way to save work in progress on a tricky formula. Normally, if you try to enter a formula in an unfinished state, Excel will throw an error, stopping you from entering the formula. However, if you add a single apostrophe before the equal sign Excel will treat the formula as text and let you enter without complaint. The single quote reminds you that the formula has been intentionally converted to text:

Later, you can then come back later to work on the formula again, starting where you left off. See #17 in this list for more info.

Источник

Sometimes, it may happen that your Excel workbook shows formulas instead of the result.

Something as shown below:

But there is no need to panic… All’s well!

This is something that’s quite common and happens to a lot of users. There could be multiple reasons behind Excel showing formula instead of the result, and in this tutorial, I will show you the potential fixes that will make this issue go away.

So let’s get started!

Show Formulas May Be Enabled (Top Reason for Formulas Showing as Text)

In some cases, people actually want to see all formulas as text in the worksheet.

There could be multiple reasons for this, the most common one is when you’re auditing the worksheet and need to know where and what formulas are being used.

This problem has an easy fix – you just need to disable ‘Show Formulas’ option (which might be enabled and is causing this issue)

Below are the steps to do this:

Click the Formulas tab
In the Formula Auditing group, click on Show Formulas.

The keyboard shortcut to enable/disable showing formulas as text options is Control + `

In most cases, this should fix the problem and your formulas should show the result and not show up as text itself.

And what if this doesn’t solve the problem and you’re still seeing formulas as text?

Keep reading and try the other fixes!

Cells are Formatted as Text

Another issue that you may face is that when you insert a formula, it shows the formulas and not the value.

One possible culprit could be the cell being formatted as Text.

And it has a really easy fix too:

Click the Home tab
In the Number group, click on the Formatting drop-down and select General (you might see Text being the option that is already selected).

Note that when you apply text formatting to a cell, it will only show formulas as a text for the formulas you enter after applying the formatting. Any formulas results before the formatting is applied will not change.

Apostrophe Before the Formula

Another issue (not as common) you may face is having an apostrophe before the formula.

When you add an apostrophe at the beginning in any cell, Excel considers the cell content as a text string. So if you do it with numbers, you will notice that they align to the left and are treated as text now.

This also sometimes happens when you get a data dump from a database, where an apostrophe is added automatically at the beginning.

To fix this, you can go to the cell and manually remove the apostrophe.

So these are some of the reasons that may make your formulas show up as text and you can easily fix them and show the results instead.

Hope you found this tutorial useful!

You may also like the following Excel tutorials:

How to Auto Format Formulas in Excel
How to Clear Contents in Excel without Deleting Formulas
SUMPRODUCT vs SUMIFS Function in Excel
How to Subtract Multiple Cells from One Cell in Excel
Why does Excel Open on Startup (and How to Stop it)
Circular References in Excel – How to Find and Fix it!
Show Formulas (Instead of Formula Result) in Excel (Shortcut)
How To Hide Formulas In Excel Without Protecting the Sheet?

Источник

Below are the top 5 most common reasons why formula text is shown in cell instead of its results. They are sorted by frequency with most popular at the top.
They apply to Excel 2013 and Excel 2016.

No equal sign before the formula

Make sure that there is an equal sign before the formula.

Formula is inside quotes or apostrophes

Check that you typed formula with no quotes or apostrophes at beginning or end.

Worksheet is set to display formula – not results

Hold down theCtrl and push `

or
Click on the Formulas Tab then check if “Show Formulas” button isn’t on.

Excel 2016 small window – Click to enlarge

Excel 2016 - show formulas - full screen

Excel 2016 full screen window – Click to enlarge

Cell is formatted as text

Sometimes showing formula as text might be due to cell format. Change it to general to see if it helps.

Right click on the cell with formula
Choose Format Cells

Click to enlarge

Select Category -> General

Click to enlarge

Click OK button

Cell with formula is locked

Found that the cell I had the formula in was “locked” (Format Cells / Protection) – it would seem that this also prevents the value from showing.
De-selecting “Locked” the value appeared immediately.

(tip from our reader Clare – thank you!)

Источник

We have an existing spreadsheet that has been working fine. Today we double-clicked a cell, to edit the formula, but did not change anything (we tested on other cells to check). When hitting enter, or clicking another cell after getting the cell in edit-mode, the cell stopped showing the formula result and instead showed the formula.

e.g cell was showing «102». Double-click and it showed =100+2. Hit enter and it shows «=100+2».

We haven’t changed workbook settings, so why would it start doing this and how can we fix it?

asked Sep 13, 2014 at 13:52

You have «Text»-type formatting chosen.

I believe this has a tendency to «leak over» if adjacent cells have it.
It is an automatic formatting option, but please don’t ask me how to turn it off.

Select the cell you have trouble with, then press CTRL+1 (Menu: Format > Cells)
Select «General» (in Excel) or «Category: All, Format: General» (LibreOffice)
… in the dialog that appears.

NOTE: You need to re-edit the cell too… (select the cell, hit F2 and then hit ENTER)

To reset ALL CELLS click the rectangle upper left — above [ 1 ] and left of [ A ] — then reset it the same way as above, the last step is a bit cumbersome :-I .

answered Sep 13, 2014 at 20:57

HannuHannu

8,4343 gold badges20 silver badges38 bronze badges

I think it’s just that «Show formulas» is checked in the auditing pane.
Press CTRL+` and it should revert back

nixda

26.5k17 gold badges107 silver badges155 bronze badges

answered Feb 20, 2015 at 4:58

The way how to reproduce this problem in Excel 2013:

Enter the formula in an empty cell, for example =D2
Change the cell format to Text
Press F2 + Enter

There are several possible workarounds I use for this situation:

First change the cell format from Text to General, then edit the formula, then switch back to Text
Delete the cell content (using Del key) and rewrite the formula text, change formatting to Text.
Write the formula text to another cell and copy the whole cell

There is a thread, that deals with the problem:

If a cell is formatted as text when you enter a formula, and if you
then change the format to (for example) General, you’ll still see the
formula. You have to press F2 then Enter, or enter the formula anew,
to see the result.

answered Jan 18, 2017 at 9:34

Vojtěch DohnalVojtěch Dohnal

3,6919 gold badges24 silver badges48 bronze badges

This happened to me, but it seems to have something to do with opening an excel 97-2004 (xls) in excel for mac 2011. Once I «saved as» an xls, the formulas were able to calculate.

answered Mar 8, 2016 at 16:36

This happened to me with Office 2010. Inexplicably, I had the option set to show formulas instead of results for that worksheet. I changed that back. That had no effect. I then had to format the cell and change it from text to general (or number would probably work as I was able to change it to that afterward), then delete what was in the cell, then reenter (I hit the autosum as that happened to be what I was trying to do).

answered Jul 12, 2016 at 19:04

RomanRoman

1214 bronze badges

The same thing happened to me. There is no Office button in Office 10, so to fix it, I did File > Options > Advanced > Display Options, and I unchecked the box that says Show formulas in cells instead of calculated results.

As for WHY it goofed up, I think someone accidentally typed a keyboard shortcut for this option by mistake, like CTRL + something (whatever the keyboard shortcut is to display formulas instead of calculated data).

Hope that helps.