Excel Formula displays text of formula

[TJAC]

This is very confusing to me and will probably be difficult to explain, so
bear with me, please.

Someone sent me a spreadsheet where on the first worksheet they concatenated
two cells =b2&b3 and it displayed the concatenated cells as it should.
However, on worksheet 2, they tried to concatenate two cells again, but this
time, it simply displayed, =c5&g5, not the data it should. I typed =2+3 and
it would not display the result, just the formula.

I inserted a new column away from this column and got it work properly. I
then copied and pasted the formula into the column that was not working and
it did work with the copy and paste. However, if I changed that formula at
all, it quit working and went back to displaying the =c5&g5. Then, from that
point on, any column would not longer display the results, just the formula
itself.

I have looked under Tools and Options and nothing under calculation looked
odd to me. It is set to Automatic.

I have not seen this before, if you know what is causing this, I would
really appreciate some help! It works the same in 2003 and 2007.

Thanks,
Trisha

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

The column where your formula is is most likely formatted as text. Change the
format to general (or some number format). Now select each formula cell and
hit F2 then <Enter> to get the formulas working again.

 

[TJAC]

That worked! Thanks so much! I did change it from text to general, but not
the f2 and enter. THANK YOU!