Format for formula cells

[tabbicat]

Do the helpfile, tour, or knowledge base state anywhere that a cell has to be
formatted General before you enter a formula for it to work? Because I spent
hours searching and trying different things today, before customer service
told to me about this forum. It took me about three searches to find my
answer: delete, format, re-enter. Voila!

I couldn't believe that none of my searches from within Excel or on the
Office website (formulas not working, formulas not displayed, formulas shown
as text, worksheet not detecting formulas, format formula cell... ) mentioned
the possibility. I've had the problem before without finding the answer. I
thought at the time, that it was a result of some other problems on my old
computer, especially when it went away later. I must have tried using a
different area of the worksheet that I had not previously formatted. This
time no matter where I tried I could not enter any new functions. I had
selected the whole sheet and formatted it Text previously. I won't do that
again.

Maybe the requirement is stated somewhere already, but I believe it should
be easier to find it when someone is having this problem. I think it should
be stated in the Enter a Formula or Using Formulas pages. "Make sure the
cells are formatted General before entering formulas."

BTW, this community forum is Great!


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[Trevor Shuttleworth]

Not necessarily "General" ... but not "Text"

If the result of a formula is a number, you might want to format it to
display the way you want. Similarly, dates and other values.

Regards

Trevor

 

[tabbicat]

That makes sense. I still think that a search should turn up the not Text
warning.
Thanks

 

[Rick S.]

It would seem, in my case, that simply formating the cell to "General" prior
to entering a Formula is not the answer!?
I can do this all day long and any time the string of characters in the cell
has changed the format reverts back to "Text". Whether it's user or macro
interaction, it fails to retain the format required.

This very frustrating and time consuming (plus it cost's mucho dollars to
fix thousands of cells over and over). It's pretty much rendering my efforts
to automate tasks as useless.

--
Regards

VBA.Noob.Confused
XP Pro
Office 2007