The format of the source cell doesn't matter. As a gerneral rule, unless you
have a specific need to set a specific type of formatting you should not
format at all.

What does your formula actually look like?

=mid(m2,2,2)
"=mid(m2,2,2)"

If it's the one with the quotes around it, remove those. The formula should
look like the first one.

Select the formula cell.
Make sure the formula is correct
Goto FormatCellsNumber tabGENERALOK
Hit function key F2 (this puts you in Edit mode)
Hit ENTER

This should work if you do it properly.

Biff

" wrote in message
ups.com...
Thank you for your info. But after i set the format of the function
cell to "general" and the source cell to "text" and hit F2 ,enter. The
function still doesn't calculate, then i clear the function cell and
re-enter the function ,it still sit there and don't give me the
result.

could this is a bug?

yq19820430

T. Valko wrote:
The cell is formatted as TEXT. Change the format to GENERAL, then with
the
cell selected, hit function key F2 then hit ENTER.

Biff

" wrote in message
s.com...
Hi everyone ,i got a problem here.

I want to get a portion of a string ,so i use mid() fucntion,but
after i entered =mid(m2,2,2) , the function doesn't calculate,it just
sit there appear as "=mid(m2,2,2)" .

I checked tools-options and find "auto calculate" is checked, can
anyone give me some suggestion to solve this problem? Thanks!!

I'm using excel 2003 chinese version, operating system is winXP sp2.
And i installed office 2003 sp2.