Excel - two questions

[smooveb]

Hi everyone,

1. for the first time in my life, I'm seeing formulas, within a cell, as opposed to the result of the formula. Is there some option setting I may have messed up, or could something else be causing this I'm not thinking of?

2. sometimes when I select a cell and drag to copy down, the value will raise incrementally 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. This happens when I don't want it to, and I can't make it happen when I need it to. Can someone shed some light on this??

Thanks,
Barrett

 

[SimonDavis]

1. Click tools/options/make sure 'formulas' is not checked.

2. Normally, if you've got a value in ONE cell, and drag it down, it won't increment.

If you've got two (or more) incremental values in 2 vertical cells, and select both (or more), and drag, it will increment - eg:

4
5

Select BOTH, it will increment, select just the 5, it will not.

FYI, if the values have a 'step' in them (eg 2 4 6 8 10), excel is clever enough to work that out - also good for dates etc.

 

[SaintAugustine]

1. Good response from Mr. Davis - did you also happen to hit Ctrl + ~? (ie, hold down the ctrl button and hit the ` button?) That toggles your view between the formulas and their results (which can be handy)

 

[xlbo]

You can also see formulae if the cell is formatted as "Text"
and you then enter a formula
HTH
Geoff

 

[smooveb]

thanks guys,

in regards to me seeing the formulas, think it was indeed in text format, and remained as a formula once I changed the format to 'number', which confused me.

Thanks everyone!

B

 

[xlbo]

Yup - if you format as text and then enter a formula, you will see a formula - if you then change the format, it won't really be applied to the cell until you edit it (F2, enter etc). After that, the form\at will be applied
Geoff

 

[kldoe]

About your 2nd question on incrementing a number from 1 to 2 to 3, etc. The easiest way is to type the first number, i.e. 1, then hold the control key down while you pull the mouse down with the fill handle.
Kathy

 

[xlbo]

Mmmm - have to disagree - the best way to make sure you know what is going to happen to your fill, is to do it with the right mouse button - after you drag down and let go, you get a fill menu where you can choose series or values. If you have dates, you get a whole host of other options like incrementing years and months etc. A very useful and AFAIK, little known set of options
HTH
Geoff