Trouble with Using Basic Formulas

[Mayo_Alex]

Help!

I am an elementary school teacher who has used Excel for many years to
calculate grades. I have spent the past 5 weeks entering grades and
progress reports are due soon. When I do a simple formula e.g. [
=Average(C2:G2) ] I get ridiculous results. I also tried to SUM the scores
and results are ridiculous. When I clear all formatting for the cells the
results are still ridiculous. But when I change the data of one cell, the
sum or average seems to be ok. Why does Excel do this? Formatting
issues???

Alex

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I am an elementary school teacher who has used Excel for many years to
calculate grades. I have spent the past 5 weeks entering grades and
progress reports are due soon. When I do a simple formula e.g. [
=Average(C2:G2) ] I get ridiculous results. I also tried to SUM the scores
and results are ridiculous. When I clear all formatting for the cells the
results are still ridiculous. But when I change the data of one cell, the
sum or average seems to be ok. Why does Excel do this? Formatting
issues???

Without knowing what "ridiculous" means to you, it's hard to tell, but
it's possible that some of your values are or were entered as Text. Once
entered as Text, changing number format won't accomplish anything since
XL doesn't consider the text a number.

You can try coercing text to numbers by copying a blank cell, selecting
your "numbers", and then choosing Edit/Paste Special, selecting the Add
and Values radio buttons.