Cell Not Accepting Formula

Good Afternoon,

This question may be something that is very obvious. Why would a cell not accept a formula. For example, I am entering =sum(j2:j500) and instead of getting the sum of those cells I get "=sum(j2:j500)". I have also noticed that this will sometimes happen when I am try to combine several cells (B2&C2&D2). This has gotten to be a little aggrevating.

This is probably something real simple, but I just don't use formulas out on the worksheet much. Most of my calculations are done using VBA.

Thanks in advance for helping me with this.

The cell(s) that the formula is/are in were probably preformatted as text...

you can select the cells (one at a time or a columnar range at a time) and go to Data|Text to Columns and just click Finish.... this should fix the problem in those cells.

or you can go to Edit|Replace and enter an = sign in both fields, then Replace All.

NBVC,

Thank you very much, that was it. I figured it had to be something real simple.