CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER array formula not working

for example:
A1: Fruit
A2: apple,apple
A3: orange
A4: apple,orange
A5: grape
A6: orange,grape
A7: grape, apple
A8: =SUM(LEN(A2:A7)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2:A7,"apple","")))/LEN("apple")

on my desktop, I select the formula in A8 and press CSE to get a result of 4 but on my laptop, I do the same thing and it doens't work. both use excel 2007.

When I press CSE on my laptop excel, the brackets { } appear but I do not get any results. Instead, it just shows the whole formula in the cell with the brackets...

The file is not in shared mode and I have the macro function turned on.

PLEASE HELP!

UPDATE: so it seems that none of my formulas are working.. not even a simple SUM function works.. is there a setting I don't know about that disables functions?

Sounds like the cell could be formatted as text

You could try

Ctrl + H
Find what: =
Replace with: =

All of my cells are formatted as general and not text.

I'm trying to count the number of times a certain word appears in a string text in A:A

I know the formula works because it works on my desktop just fine but I can't seem to get it to work on my laptop.

as I edited above in my original post, I found out that no formulas work on my laptop excel.
I can't even get a simple SUM function to work. Is there a setting to enable/disable functions, formulas other than the macro option?

Okay so we know the formula works, but just not on your laptop. Maybe the option to "Show Formulas in Cells" is turned on.

To correct this or toggle the option on/off...

Switch between displaying formulas and their values on a worksheet
Press CTRL + ` (grave accent).