Ways to view a Formula in Excel – how can I see what is actually in my formulas? Watch the video to learn more
This week’s hint and tip is about ways to view a formula in Excel. This is mentioned in our Basic Excel training course but we decided to create a hint and tip on it to go into more detail. We are going to go through it now below.
First way
The first way to view a formula in Excel is to use the formula bar. Firstly click on the cell that has your formula in it. After doing this, look above the column headings for the long bar that runs across the spreadsheet that will contain the formula. From here you can see what you formula contains and can also click into this bar to edit the formula.
Second way
The second way is by double left clicking. To do this, double left click onto the cell that contains your formula and it will go into the cell. It will change the answer that is shown to now display your formula so you can see and edit it.
Third way
The third and final way in the video is using a keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcut is the Ctrl key and the key above the Tab key and to the left of the ‘1’ key on your keyboard. To use the shortcut firstly hold down the Ctrl key and then press this key on your keyboard. It will change the screen in front of you to display all the formulas that you have in your spreadsheet. To get the screen back to normal, repeat the process and the formulas will no longer be shown.
The video below shows you how to do all three of these ways to view a formula, there might be more but these are just three that we have put together. This feature in Excel can be very useful to find out what your formulas are in Excel.
Take a look below at the video to find out more and then try it out on your own computer!
We hope you have enjoyed this hint and tip on ways to view a formula in Excel. Why not take a look at our previous one on how to create a signature in Outlook?