You may have noticed that for some reason lots of cells are showing with strikethroughs (example of a strikethrough) through them and then it disappears, especially on bigger spreadsheets or where you are in manual calculation mode.
As shown below, I opened up the Excel file and all the cells that have calculations in them have strikethroughs on them. Either on its own, or when you click on F9, they will then disappear, but they can return at various times.
If you try and switch off the strike through the normal way via format cells you will see that it does not have the strike through ticked (and if you tick it they will stay on)
This is as a result of a new feature in Excel.
As shown below, go to the Formula ribbon and click on Calculation Options. There is a new option called ‘Format Stale Values’ which does exactly what it says.
If values are ‘stale’ it implies that Excel has not had the chance to update them yet, either because you are on manual mode (which means you need to click F9), or you have just opened the file (and perhaps it is quite big) and Excel needs a chance to rerun all the calculations to freshen them up.
This can be a very useful feature, especially in those stressful situations where you need to produce information and live in fear of forgetting to recalculate. This is a visual representation that you need to update the calculations before you rely on the values. Using Calculation options you can switch this feature on and off as you require.