Are you wondering how to show formulas in Excel? In this video, we will show you a couple of methods for viewing and working with your formulas on your spreadsheet.
How to Show Formulas in Excel – The Transcript
There are times in Excel when we would like to see the underlying formulas on our spreadsheet instead of the answers. If we have a pretty straightforward spreadsheet like this, we could always go up to the formulas ribbon, and click Show Formulas. With only a couple of columns of information, our spreadsheet is still pretty easy to read.
However, if we have a bigger, more complicated spreadsheet like this, using the Show Formulas button could make our spreadsheet much more overwhelming and confusing. Let’s turn this off.
So how can we see where all of our formulas are in a nice neat way? Well, we can use the Find formulas option. First, we’ll make sure only a single cell is selected. Otherwise, if you have several cells selected, Excel will only search that group of cells.
Then on the Home ribbon, way down the end, we’ll click on Find and Select and we’ll choose formulas. There you go, all of the cells containing formulas are hidden. The only issue is if we start to work on the spreadsheet, the cells are deselected.
So this is what we’ll do. We’ll go back to the Find and Select and choose formulas. Then we’ll fill those cells with color. Maybe I’ll choose a yellow color. Now we can work on a spreadsheet and know exactly where our formulas are. When we’re finished, we can just remove the highlighting by going back to find and select formulas, and then selecting no fill.
Now your spreadsheet’s back to normal. I’ll use this trick whenever someone gives me a spreadsheet to work on, it really helps to map out where all of their formulas are before I start updating information.
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