Excel formula builder shows the right value but doesn't show in cell

**cheung** · 04-24-2012, 01:23 PM

I'm having a strange issue which I'll do my best to describe. Basically I've built a formula to find the latest date that a mating pair of animals had a litter. I used the process described here: http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009...-in-excel/#all but modified for my own sheet. It seemed to be working well, I used the formula builder to make it and the value it said was the result was 40786 (or 8/13/11 when formatted as a date), however when I hit enter it came up as 0 in the cell. Confused I clicked on the cell with the formula builder still up and again it shows the result in the lower right of the box as 40786. It's probably something stupid I've done, but for the life of me I can't figure out what I messed up. I'll attach a image showing what I'm seeing and the Excel file to this message. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Picture 2.jpg

For those who are wondering, the formula uses the "IF" statement to scan the "source" column of the animals for a number that matches the breeding pair (breeders are highlighted in blue) and then returns the DOB. Then the MAX formula should return the max (latest) date of birth that it finds for a litter that corresponds to that breeding pair. Or at least that was what I was thinking. Again, any help is greatly appreciated.