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I have a spread sheet sent to me by a friend and I want to add a column with some formulas in. Instead of containing the results of the formulas the new cells contain the text of the formula. Why? How do I fix this?

Here's a simple example in which I would expect the cell B1 to contain the text Tim but instead it contains the text =A1:

enter image description here

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I only use Excel 2003, but I suspect it's the same: you have the cell set to be a text cell rather than a formula cell. In my case I can right click on the cell and select how it will display.

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Bingo! If I change the cell formatting to general and re-enter the formula it works. Thanks Xavier. – dumbledad Nov 16 '12 at 8:17
Your welcome. If you need the whole column to be changed you can click on the column header and do the same thing rather than one at a time. – Xavierjazz Nov 17 '12 at 4:49

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