Formula showing formula not result | How to solve

I recently came across an interesting problem. A student in one of my classes asked me to help her set up some If functions which I did and which worked fine.

It was a function to say that if a cell was blank, then the answer was to show today minus the days in F2, otherwise it was to show the difference between the days in G2 and F2.

However, instead of seeing the result of =IF(ISBLANK(G2),TODAY()-F2,G2-F2) which should have been 5, instead she was seeing IF(ISBLANK(G2),TODAY()-F2,G2-F2) .

The first thing I checked was the Formulas – Show Formulas ribbon to see if that was on. Nope. I did a bit more checking and it turns out that the problem was that the cell was formatted in TEXT instead of General. Changed that and hey presto it was now showing 5.

A simple thing but worth adding to your own repertoire of solutions..it will make you look really good 🙂

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Formula showing formula not result | How to solve

Excel Products for Sale

MrExcel.com

MyExcelOnline.com

Xtreme Pivot Tables course

Debra Dalgleish – Contextures.com

Excel UserForms for Data Entry

PivotPowerPremiumRibbon

Chandoo.org

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