You can read more about absolute, relative, and mixed references here. You may get an incorrect result in case you forget to change the reference to an absolute one or vice versa.
This is something that happens quite often to me when I am using lookup formulas. By having these dollar signs before the row number and column alphabet in a cell reference, I am forcing Excel to keep these cell references fixed. So, even when I copy this formula down, the table array will continue to refer to A2:B6. When you refer to other sheets or workbooks in a formula, you need to follow a specific format.
And in case the format is incorrect, you will get an error. A1 where there is an exclamation sign after the sheet name. A1 where the name is enclosed in single quotes followed by an exclamation sign. And in case you close the workbook, the reference would change to include the entire path of the workbook as shown below :. A circular reference is when you refer directly or indirectly to the same cell where the formula is being calculated.
Below is a simple example, where I use the SUM formula in cell A4 while using it in the calculation itself. Although Excel shows you a prompt letting you know about the circular reference, it will not do it for every instance. And this may give you the wrong result without any warning.
Hover the cursor over the Circular reference option and it will show you the cell that has the circular reference issue. A lot of people add an apostrophe to convert formulas and numbers to text. Excel has this bad habit of converting that looks like a date into an actual date. In my case, when I do this, it converts it into the number for Now, whenever you enter anything in the selected cells, it would be considered as text, and not changed automatically.
Note: The above steps would only work for data entered after the formatting has been changed. It will not change any text that has been converted to date before you made this formatting change. Excel automatically removes these leading zeros as it considers these useless. For example, if you enter in a cell, Excel will change it to 1.
In case you want to keep these leading zeros, use the steps above. For example, suppose you have a dataset as shown below and I want to get the sum of all the visible cells in column C. And here is the problem — the formula in cell C12 still shows the same result — i. As I said, the formula is not giving the wrong result. In fact, the SUM function is working just fine.
SUM function can not account for the filtered data and give you the result for all the cells hidden or visible. If you run into a formula like this, check to see if the cell format is set to Text. If so, set the format to General, or another suitable number format. You may need to enter cell edit mode click into the formula bar, or use F2, then enter to get Excel to recognize the format change.
Excel should then evaluate as a formula. Although a broken formula is never fun, you can sometimes use the "formula as text problem" to your advantage, as a way to save work in progress on a tricky formula. Normally, if you try to enter a formula in an unfinished state, Excel will throw an error, stopping you from entering the formula. However, if you add a single apostrophe before the equal sign Excel will treat the formula as text and let you enter without complaint.
The single quote reminds you that the formula has been intentionally converted to text:. Later, you can then come back later to work on the formula again, starting where you left off. See 17 in this list for more info. Skip to main content. Excel shows formula but not result Have you entered a formula, but Excel is not calculating a result?
There are two main reasons you might see a formula instead of a result: You accidentally enabled Show Formulas Excel thinks your formula is text I'll walk through each case with some examples. Show Formulas is enabled Excel has a feature called Show Formulas that toggles the display of formula results and actual formulas.
Watch a video with over 20 formula tips. See also. You can do this with these methods:. For recalculating an entire spreadsheet, press F9 on your keyboard or choose Calculate Now under Formula Tab. Moreover, if you prefer recalculating just one formula from a sheet, you can select the cell and then press Enter.
When dealing with spreadsheets, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. It might be helpful to learn a few keyboard shortcuts if you work with Excel a lot. While Excel might be your preferred application, there are various other applications similar to it, such as Google Sheets, and the above methods will work with them all. Excel isn't only for business. Here are several Microsoft Excel formulas that will help you solve complex daily problems.
Technology Editor. I'm an obsessive tinkerer, and I procrastinate on the future. Calculation Options Set to Manual. Share Share Tweet Email.
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