Excel 2008 : Formulas Not Calculating or Displaying Wrong Values

**A5miller** · 06-19-2011, 07:10 AM

I am building a workbook that tracks all transactions of a business. The sheet essentially has three tables in it. The first is for each individual transaction in all its details, the second conditionally sums the daily totals of each transaction type, and the third sums the month. All the formulas in the individual transaction record portion are functioning perfectly, however, in the daily totals the cells are not updating to display the values, or in one case updates to display the wrong value. Calculations are set to automatic. If you look at each cell with the formula builder the 'result' shows the correct value every time, and if you click on the formula bar at the top then hit enter the correct value will be generated. I have tried replacing all the '=' with new '=', I have tried re-saving to a new file, copying everything to a new file etc... I am now at the end of my rope and can not figure out what is wrong...

Any help would be greatly appreciated
Working in Excel Mac:2008

**Richard Buttrey** · 06-19-2011, 09:54 AM

Hi,

Please upload the workbook and give some examples of the results you expect to see.

Regards

**A5miller** · 06-19-2011, 04:09 PM

Thanks, here is the work book. A few notes:

1. Working in '08 but saving as .xls because the person who will use this has an older version

2. List variables are hidden in column M

3. I have input a couple of sample transactions and manually updated the cells to show the correct values for them, to help show how the data should propagate

**Richard Buttrey** · 06-19-2011, 07:07 PM

Hi,

I can't see any manually entered numbers. They app appear to be formulae in the daily summary table. Which specific cells do you think are giving the wrong results?

Regards

**A5miller** · 06-20-2011, 02:13 AM

I only manually updated the formulas in the daily summary to show how it all should flow out... if you try entering a few sample transactions in the transaction record portion you should see that the formulas don't automatically spit out the right numbers on the daily summary side

**Richard Buttrey** · 06-20-2011, 12:25 PM

Hi,

I don't understand what you mean by manually updating the formulas. Please reference specific cells which are not giving you the results you want and say what the results should be.

Regards

**A5miller** · 06-21-2011, 01:58 AM

I mean that i clicked on the formula bar at the top, then clicked enter, forcing the formula to update itself and display the correct summation in the sheet. I have been experimenting and this really seems to be a problem with the Mac version of excel, somehow linked to copy and pasting sheet to sheet. When i open the file on a PC things begin to work fine, if i then take it back to my Mac it works fine until i copy and paste the working cells to a new sheet or file, or really anywhere and then they begin to misbehave again.

in answer to your actual question of which cells though... basically i was having problems with all the cells O4:Z34

I think i am just going to borrow a PC, try and finish the work with my fingers crossed that the problem is just with my Mac version, and then protect all the formulas, which will hopefully keep things from going haywire again. Not exactly fixing the problem but at least allowing me to work around it

**Richard Buttrey** · 06-21-2011, 03:24 AM

Hi,

I've not got access to my Mac just at the moment so can't check but I'm surprised that the normal keyboard shortcuts for Copy and Paste don't work.

That said, and as a general point, although I'm a keen proponent of the Mac platform, frankly the Excel versions for the Mac are really too much trouble. I use the Mac for just about everything apart from Excel. The VBA syntax (and of course there is no VBA in Excel for Mac 2008

) is different with some key instructions and can cause problems when users try to use Windows developed workbooks on the Mac.

If you have any serious business applications I'd urge you to either run Excel for Windows through a virtual Window with something like Parallels software, or use Boot camp to boot with Windows proper, or like me keep a dedicated machine just for Excel for Windows.

Regards