Try clicking Format/Cells and changing the formatting [D4] to General. It
sounds like D4 is formatted as text.

"Tosca" wrote:

Hi everyone

I have Excel 2003 and a large spreadsheet with many formulae. I had to edit
one of them and, when I did, it displayed the formula in the cell, rather
than the result. I made sure that there were no spaces in the formula, nor
was there a leading apostrophe. None of the other formulae were displayed
in this way.

In an effort to find the cause, I closed the workbook and started a new one.
I typed something into cell A2 then typed the formula <=A2 into D4. It
returned the correct result in D4. I tried the similar experiment with the
big workbook that's causing problems but it didn't calculate the value of A2
and return it to D4. It merely displayed <=A2 in D4. The questions I have
a

Is the problem related to the fact that there are several formulae in the
workbook or is there a setting that's been applied (somehow) which is
causing newly entered formulae to be displayed, rather than evaluated?

It's bizarre behaviour, and I want it to stop!

Thanks for your time.