Here are some solutions to fix the issue:
Solution 1 – Disable Show Formulas. If only formula shows in Excel not result, check if you have accidentally or intentionally enabled ‘show formula’ feature of Excel. Another possible reason that only formula shows in Excel not result could be that the cell format is set to text. There is an “automatic calculation” feature in Excel, which tells Excel to do calculations automatically or manually. There is a proper way to tell Excel that your text is a formula. When you use a number in the formula, make sure you don’t enter any decimal separator or currency sign, e., and g., and $, etc.
A frequent question we ran across in our research was “Why excel shows formula and not result?”.
[Solution] Excel Formula Shows Formula but not Result
No equal sign. First, you may have forgotten the equal sign. Space before equal sign. A subtle variation of this problem can occur if there is one Formula wrapped in quotes. Finally, make sure the formula is not wrapped in quotes. Finally, every once in a while, see more, or cell format set to text too will be usefull too.
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.
The next thing we wanted the answer to was, how to show formula instead of formula in Excel?
Select the formula cells range. Now go to the formula tab and click on the Show Formulas option. Once you click on that option, excel starts to show the formula instead of the formula results. Shortcut to show formula in excel is Ctrl + `.
Click the Formulas tab. In the Formula Auditing group, click on Show Formulas. The keyboard shortcut to enable/disable showing formulas as text options is Control + `. In most cases, this should fix the problem and your formulas should show the result and not show up as text itself.
Why is the formula displayed instead of the result?
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 do I see a formula instead of a result?
There are two main reasons you might see a formula instead of a result: I’ll walk through each case with some examples. Excel has a feature called Show Formulas that toggles the display of formula results and actual formulas.
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.
Why Excel is not calculating a result?
Every once in a while, you might find Excel behaving in a bizarre or unexpected way. One example is when you accidentally trigger the scroll lock feature. Another example is when one or more formulas suddenly stops working.
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?