Once in a while everyone is bound to come across this problem. You type a formula in a cell, then you press ENTER. Bam! nothing happens. You check if a donut chunk went in to the key board and some how jammed the ENTER key. So press it again, this time harder. But nothing. Excel formula showing as text instead of actual result, like this:
Now what to do?
Of course, you can be careful when eating donuts. But careful donuts sure sounds like a paradox. So instead lets roll up our sleeves and find out the reason for this mishap.
The top reason for Excel formula showing as text :
You may have accidentally pressed CTRL+` (back quote symbol, the key below escape key in your keyboard) or activated the “Show Formulas” mode in Excel. 
When you do it, excel shows the formulas instead of their results.
To fix this error and get back the values (or results) just press CTRL+` again or click on the “Show formulas button”
The next reason why formulas are shown as formulas:
You may have set the cell formatting to “Text” and then typed the formula in it.
When you set the cell formatting to “Text”, Excel treats the formula as text and shows it instead of evaluating it.
To fix this error, just select the cell, set its formatting to “General”. Now edit the formula and press enter. (Alternatively you can press F2 and then Enter after setting format to General).
The less probable reason why formulas are shown as formulas instead of values:
You may have accidentally typed a single quote ‘ before the = sign in the formula.
When you type single quote ‘ in a cell excel treats the cell contents as text and does not evaluate any formulas within.
To fix this error, just remove the single quote.
What is your experience with excel formula errors?
The very first time I pressed CTRL+` by accident, it nearly freaked me out. All the columns became too wide and the formatting went for a toss. Everything looked weird. It took me a while to figure out that I accidentally pressed the Show Formulas shortcut (CTRL+`). I felt huge relief when I got the results back.
What about you? Did the formula error ever freaked you out? What other things about formulas worry you? Pls. share using comments.
11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.