Try hitting F2 then Enter.

Tools, Options, Calculation, calculation: automatic

Does F9 fix it
Does CTRL+ALT+F9 fix it
or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F9 for Excel 2002 will rebuild all dependency trees

check format of cells, if it is text that would do it
select cell, format, cells, (see what you have for format if not General)

If you have a space in front of = sign you will just see "formula"
check the length of cell again what you see =LEN(A1)
You might try TRIMALL macro in
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/join.htm
which is useful for a lot of screwups, including
- changing between text and number or number and text without reentering,
- removing extraneous spaces or Char(160) which is the Required Blank or non-breaking space
especially if source was HTML which has  

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HTH,
David McRitchie, Microsoft MVP - Excel [site changed Nov. 2001]
My Excel Pages: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/excel.htm
Search Page: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/search.htm

"Jay Mac" wrote in message ...
Some cells on the worksheet will show the information in the referenced cell.
Others only show the statement. For example, if I enter ='log'!K5, that's
exactly what appears in that cell, not the contents of the referenced cell.

John