That was it (it appears-I need to look in some other places on other
workbooks where I've had the problem.) I'll just respond here but thanks to
the others who gave similar advice.

It's a little like a virus. Once it's there and the formula becomes text
it's tough to get rid of. I just created a new column, make sure it was
General format, copied the formula as characters and pasted in the new column
and things started working again.

Althogh I haven't tracked things back to where the problem originated (I
have some complex ISNA(INDEX(MATCH..... formulas) - a word to the wise. If
the spreadsheets you are working on come from a COTS package (in my case
Quickbooks - no criticism) make sure you have your radar on for Text cells.

Thanks again to all

I love this forum

Tom

"Gary''s Student" wrote:

Some of your cells may be formatted as Text. Format them as general prior to
entering formulae. If you have already entered cells that you want to
convert, then enter:

Sub formfix()
Dim r As Range
Count = 0
For Each r In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
If Application.IsText(r.Value) Then
If Left(r.Value, 1) = "=" Then
r.NumberFormat = "General"
r.Formula = r.Value
Count = Count + 1
End If
End If
Next
MsgBox (Count & " cells changed")
End Sub

and run it. It should convert all your pseudo-formulae into real ones.
--
Gary's Student


"tcarp" wrote:

In some cases Excel (2003 SP2) is displaying the formula in a cell, not the
results. The formula (say Concatenate or an IF) is correct and there is no
error being indicated. In one case I entered a simple Concatenate and got
the whole "=Concatenate....." displayed in the cell. I stumbled on a
workaround by entering the formula in the second cell in a column where the
formula did not display and then copying the formula to the first cell in the
column.

On another worksheet its not been so simple. I have a relatively complex
IF(ISNA(INDEX(MATCH) formula that displays fine. If I edit the formula to
pull out a portion (in this case the ISNA part), I get the formula displayed.
I've even tried to reenter the formula from scratch but get the formula
displayed.

I can't figure out a pattern here. The formulas are valid and run from very
simple to somewhat complex so I don't think it has anything to do with the
formulas themselves.

Any ideas?

Tom