Is anyone here good with Excel? Or know of a helpful forum? I've just run into a wonky problem

[Bucky]

Last edited Mon Jun 24, 2024, 06:05 AM - Edit history (1)

Update: Problem solved, thanks to Unblock

I know this is a leetle OT, but I've been a fan of excel for years and I just ran into a hitch I've never seen before. And I can't find any help from the MS Help button.

On a page I'm making, I hit some keystroke by accident and the page did two weird things
1. it rendered all the columns (which I had a varying widths) to the default of 8.43 / 128 pixels. Hitting Cntl+Z did not undo this

but even more frustratingly...

2. It deformatted all of my cells. It WON'T display my values, only the formulas I wrote in the cells. No matter how I try to fix or reset the formulas & view, it won't show the values of my cells, only the formulas inside them. It wasn't a complicated page. I was just adding and averaging some rows. Where it used to read:

7
14
12
3
6
7
6
5
12
6
78
3.3

It now reads:

7
14
12
3
6
7
6
5
12
6
=SUM(E9:E20)
=E21/7

I've tried the Cntl+1 to reformat the cells, make sure they weren't set to "text". I've gone throough the View Tab options. Nothing makes the spreadsheet go back to showing the Sum and Average I want instead of showing the Excel formula. There's not a reddit group or online forum I've found that can help me troubleshoot this apparent glitch. Does someone have a suggestion of where I can turn to get my Excel to act right?

Sincerely,
-- Hacked Off in Houston

[unblock]

1. Sounds like you inadvertently turned "show formulas" on.

It may depend on your version of excel, but it's probably in the formula ribbon, toggle show formulas on/off. Highlight the affected cells (or the entire sheet and toggle the back to off.

There's a keyboard shortcut for this, cell-' (that's meant to be a back quote, which some people call an accent grave but I think they're slightly different than things)

My guess is that you accidentally hit this shortcut.

There may be something else going on but this is my guess, I've done it myself a few times...

[Bucky]

4. Thanks!

[lastlib]

5. This sounds like the solution.

Possibly when trying to format cells with , you inadvertently hit the key next to the 1 instead of the 1. Use to toggle back to normal.

If this doesn't work, try

[canetoad]

2. Shut the document down

Do not save. Then reopen. Does this restore your old version?

[Bucky]

3. LoL

Turn it off and then turn it back on again?

This is the perfect technology advice. I can't believe I didn't think of this, since I tell my students to do it all the time