Excel showing formula instead of result

A common question we get is why is excel showing formula instead of result or value. There are a couple of possible answers depending if it is the whole sheet doing it or just some select cells, columns or rows.

Excel CELL, COLUMN or ROW showing formula instead of result

In this situation, the most likely cause is that the cell is formatted as text. This often happens when you have imported data from another system.

You will need to change the format to General. Even then it may still show the formula. Click in the cell and click enter and it should revert to a formula that actually works. If there are lots of cells, use the FIND REPLACE tool and replace all the = with an = (you are just getting Excel to go into and out of each cell instead of you having to do it)

Another possibility is that there is an apostrophe ( ‘ ) in front of the formula. Remove the apostrophe and the formula should work.

Excel SPREADSHEET displays formulas instead of values

If the entire spreadsheet is showing the underlying formula instead of the results it could be that you have the ‘Show Formula’ button toggled to on. Go to the FORMULA tab, by the FORMULA AUDITING section and click the SHOW FORMULA button, or click CTRL + ~ (next to the 1 key)

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