The formula is entered but the formula is displayed instead of the result. A cell in an Excel worksheet can have many formats and the default format of all cells in a new sheet is General (which would not cause this problem). Hence, a possible reason could be that the cell in which the formula is entered is formatted as Text. What’s the fix?
Why is excel showing formulas instead of results?
This is the most common reason why Excel is showing formulas instead of the results. It happens most often when a report is exported from another system, perhaps in a CSV format. When entering a formula, it will by default be in a TEXT format: To resolve this, change the format to General and enter the formula again:.
Why is my formula not showing up in Excel?
Finally, every once in a while, you might see a formula that is well-formed in every way, but somehow does not display a result. If you run into a formula like this, check to see if the cell format is set to Text.
What is the ‘show formulas’ feature in Excel?
Instead of applying calculations and then showing results, this feature displays the actual text written by you. You can use the ‘Show Formulas’ feature to quickly view all formulas, but if you are not aware of this feature, and enabled it accidentally, it can be a headache.
Yet another question we ran across in our research was “How to disable show formulas in Excel?”.
Our answer is you can either press Ctrl + `. This is a toggle shortcut for Show Formulas and will also switch the option off. The other way is to hit the Show Formulas button in the Formulas tab. Both methods will disable Show Formulas. The problem is the same but the reason is different. The formula is entered but the formula is displayed instead of the result.
This of course begs the inquiry “Why do we need to edit the formula in Excel?”
One way to consider this is the reason for editing the formula is that formatting the cell to General will not have any impact on the cell’s existing contents. Similarly, if you already had the result of your formula and later the cell is formatted to Text, it will not change to the formula in text.
How to recover calculated formulas in Excel without the result?
You can try Stellar Repair for Excel software to recover engineering and shared formulas. Sometimes, when you type a formula in a cell of worksheet and press Enter, instead of showing the calculated result, it returns the formula as text. For instance, Excel cell shows: Why Does Excel Show or Display the Formula Not the Result?