And another possible cause...

Excel likes to help.

Try this on a test worksheet.
Select A1 and hit ctrl-; (to put the date in the cell)
now select B1 and type: =a1

Notice that excel changed the format of B1 to match the format in A1.

Now format D1 as Text.
put ASDF in D1
put =D1 in E1
You see ASDF.

With E1 selected, hit the F2 key and then enter (to pretend that you're changing
the formula).

Excel has "helped" you by changing that cell's format to text.

I don't know of any way of changing this behavior.

I just select the cell, and reformat it to General (or whatever I wanted). I
hit F2 and then enter (to reenter that formula).

Sometimes this feature is nice, sometimes it ain't.

Rayo K wrote:

Yesterday I encountered a problem with Excel formulas. Several cells began to
display the formula instead of the result on one of my spreadsheets.

My formula was simple: =$f$1

Instead of displaying the value of F1, it actually displays "=$F$1"

Reviewing the posts from yesterday, I count 4 people posting with the EXACT
SAME PROBLEM.

The symptoms are the same. Cells display the formula instead of the result.
NONE of the proposed solutions help.

I know most of the settings for Excel so I checked the obvious: Are cells
set to calculate automatically: YES. In the view settings are formulas
checked for display: NO. Is there a formula error that causes the formula to
be displayed (extra =): NO

Several people proposed checking whether the format was set to text:

FORMATTING AS TEXT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO DISPLAY FORMULAS!! Formatting as text
should display the formula RESULTS AS TEXT!

Why are so many people suddenly having this problem? Was there a recent
update to Excel that could affect this? Is there a coding error that somehow
was triggered by the date?

Is there anyone who can get to the bottom of this?

--

Dave Peterson