Help - seeing formulas instead of results but only is some cells.

[Vulcan]

Help!

I have a large complex workbook with several pages, involving lots of
complex formulas and lookups, etc.

For some reason, on one of the pages, the formulas are showing up in
particular cells instead of the results. There are no indications of any
errors.

I'm currently using Office 20078 under vista, but I've had this problem with
this particular sheet in earlier version of excel. I've tried turning of
and on the display of formulas - that doesn't fix it. Re-formatting doesn't
help (either does the format painter). IT drives me crazy. I think I've
fixed it before by copying the formal to a new book and pasting it back,
although that doesn't appear to resolve the problem any more. Any
suggestions on what could be causing this strange behavior?

 

[Pete_UK]

It sounds like the cells are formatted as Text, so you need to change
them to General, or Number. The change is not affected straightaway,
though - you also need to press F2 afterwards (or double-click the
cell) as if to edit it, then press <Enter>

Hope this helps.

Pete

 

[Vulcan]

Hi Pete:

Great stuff -that was it!

I'm not clear on why it works - I had played with changing the format
before - without hitting F2. What does F2 do?

Also not clear why the format painter doesn't resolve this; wouldn't setting
the format from Text to General be included as part of the general format
painter function?