Formula is changing to text when I hit enter

[Dave M]

What is happening? it is format is general. the cell and its references are
all named.

Formula is:
=IF(ww4360<>"",ww4360+xx4360,xx4360)

When I hit enter after creating the formula, it saves the cell as the value.
Not just displaying the value, saving it as that.

Help!

 

[Eduardo]

Hi,
hit CTRL + ~

 

[Dave M]

It is not a matter of viewing the formula, it is that it changes the formula
to a value. Instead of the cell (when I hit F2) saying "=a+b+c" it says "5"

 

[Allen]

Perhaps the content of the cells would help. If the cells are "3", "4" and
"5" and you want the result to be "345" then you have to use the Concatenate
operator "&" instead of the addition operator "+". Excel defaults to
assuming that characters that look like numbers are numbers and adds them as
such. Instead of "ww4360+xx4360" try "ww4360 & xx4360".

Hope this helps. If not, please include specific contents of the two cells
and the desired output to assist in better helping solve your problem.

 

[Dave M]

Nothing to do with concatenate. Hard to type without sounding like an ass,
so please don't take it the wrong way. I believe myself to be an advanced
user of excel, I can make this program do pretty much anything I can
envision. I cannot figure out for the life of me why this is happening
though.


I type in the formula (noted earlier), for examples sake, lets call the
formula '=a1+a2+a3'. A1 = 1, A2 = 4, A3 = 8. When I hit enter, not only
does the cell say 13, the formula is gone and leaves the formula answer as
the value. The formula is gone (I am not just looking at the value, the cell
is now the value. Formula is no longer a part of the workbook). Imagine
that I copied the cell, pasted special values only. This is what happens.

I have deleted all vb scripts from the workbook and it is still doing this.
I do have userforms linked to the cells as a control source, but I have never
run into this problem before and have worked sheets like this at least 1/2
dozen times before...

 

[Dave Peterson]

If you're sure you're not looking at formulas, then reformat the cell as General
and reenter the formula--selecting the cell, hitting F2, then enter should be
enough.


Saved from a previous post.

Excel likes to help.

Try this on a test worksheet.
Select A1 and hit ctrl-; (to put the date in the cell)
now select B1 and type: =a1

Notice that excel changed the format of B1 to match the format in A1.

Now format D1 as Text.
put ASDF in D1
put =D1 in E1
You see ASDF.

With E1 selected, hit the F2 key and then enter (to pretend that you're changing
the formula).

Excel has "helped" you by changing that cell's format to text.

I don't know of any way of changing this behavior.

I just select the cell, and reformat it to General (or whatever I wanted). I
hit F2 and then enter (to reenter that formula).

Sometimes this feature is nice, sometimes it ain't.

 

[Dave M]

I've got it working, but still don't understand why. I just used a
relative (a1, a2, a3, etc) instead of the named ranges.

All that matters is that it works now...