Excel is one of the most useful applications that the Microsoft Office suite has. It allows cells to be related to execute advanced arithmetic operations that make complex calculations possible to be carried out practically in an automated way in a matter of a few seconds after entering two or more data. Among some functions, you can easily take a percentage , get the absolute value in Excel , and automatically multiply. However, sometimes the process can get complicated, if you still haven’t figured out how to get Excel to calculate the formulas in your documents, you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s say you’re in the middle of a task and you need Excel to give you a hand, if it doesn’t seem to be cooperating, here’s how you can fix it. Whether you are preparing an extensive job of calculating budgets, quotes or payroll payments to employees, but there is nothing to worry about, everything has a solution and this one, you will find it like this. In a matter of minutes, Excel will become your best ally to calculate those formulas that make you think so much.
The most important thing is to review the settings, these may have been misconfigured and therefore the formulas are not being calculated correctly. Don’t despair, whether it’s due to a program crash or a key shortcut you accidentally pressed, we’re going to make Excel calculate the formulas again .
Contents
- 1How to get Excel to calculate the formulas
- 1Formulas are not really formulas, but text
- 2Bug in Excel option settings
- 3Still not working? You can reset the default values
- 4Check the formula in Excel to calculate it successfully
- 5Update the program to ensure proper operation
How to get Excel to calculate formulas
This is the most frequent error that has to do with Excel. That it does not calculate the formulas, it is an error that if you do not know how to repair it, it can cause headaches, there are several types of errors that can occur within this app, we leave you each one of them and their solution:
Formulas are not actually formulas, but text
Normally, Excel should catch the formulas and apply them, however, sometimes the program will not detect them as such, but as plain text. This is very easy to fix, just follow these steps:
- Make the tab with the formulas you want to work in the foreground within Excel.
- On the toolbar select Format Cell.
- Now select Generaland Raw .
- Now go to the cell in which you preset the result of the formula to appear, double click on it.
- Press Enterand you will see how the formula is activated showing the result again.
The text will become a formula and it will be calculated automatically, so you can have all the calculations of the document ready in a matter of minutes.
Excel option settings bug
This solution is just as easy to apply as the first, only now you will configure the Excel options so that this program can recalculate the formulas:
- Open the Excel sheet whose calculations are not running and keep it in the foreground.
- Now go to File, menu located at the top left of the program interface, you may have to press the Office symbol .
- Now, on the interface that appears, select Formulasand then Calculation Options .
- In this dropdown select Book Calculationand see if the value is set to Automatic , if not, set it to this value.
- Select OKfor the changes to be saved.
As you can see, it is usually not difficult to reset the configuration, it will surely take less time to identify what type of error it is. Once you are clear, you can use the function normally again.
Still not working? You can reset the default values
Restarting Excel if it doesn’t calculate values is a great idea if you’ve already tried the previous two steps and they didn’t work. The reset process will leave your Excel as freshly installed, and if it worked perfectly before when you first installed it, it will after a reset as well.
- Right-click on the Start icon and select Apps & Features.
- Search among the applications for Microsoft Exceland click on it.
- Now select Modify.
- You will be offered several options, you need to select Repair.
This will begin to reinstall Excel with all the original files and settings, by the way, this is also useful when there is an error that does not allow the application to start.
Check the formula in Excel so that it calculates it successfully
Sometimes Excel may not pick up the formula because you are not using the proper operators for a certain calculation. Pay attention to the parentheses, arithmetic signs, commas and decimals, some may be missing or over . This can cause Excel to be unable to perform the calculation correctly.
In most cases, if this happens, you will see a message indicating “ NULL ” in the box intended to show the result of the calculation. Double check and make sure you have entered the exact formula for the calculation.
Update the program to ensure proper operation
Something may have changed in Excel and a new version of the application is required for it to work properly again. You can check for new Excel updates from the Microsoft app store. You can also completely uninstall the program and purchase a different version that you know works fine, so you can ensure that Excel calculates the formulas in your document successfully.
