How to display formula or custom text instead of value for a specific cell

Hi guys,

I have a problem which I couldn't find an answer by googling. I hope I can get help here.

I am asked to reproduce an excel spreadsheet (a rent roll), however, for some cells, I need to display not the result but some text or the formula.

Example:

=5.00*75%

instead of displaying 3.75, it needs to show "5.00 x 75%" meanwhile Excel still needs to treat it as a number (3.75) to do further calculations.

I have attached the screenshot of the pdf version of the spreadsheet I need to reproduce.

ScreenHunter_200 Oct. 23 16.55.jpg

Thanks a lot for your help.

Assuming 5.00 in A1 and 75% in A2, to get your text format use

=TEXT(A1,"0.00")&" x "&TEXT(A2,"0%")

Then to calculate it as numbers, refer to the original values, not the text string.

=SUM(other values,A1*A2)

Excel can not evaluate a text string as a numeric value, while there are workarounds, they are going to make a simple task far more complicated than needed.

But that would show the formula exactly as entered, which would include any cell references, not the values that they hold.

Thank you Jason & FDibbins for your helpful comments.

Now since the spreadsheet i was trying to reproduce presented to me as printed pdf and I read something about custom views for printing same spreadsheet but in different format (landscape vs portrait, hide/unhide some columns, etc.) so maybe using custom views can help "mask" the those specific cells with the "alternate text".

What do you think? Would it work?