Forum Discussion

Sangeeta Mudnal's avatar
Sangeeta Mudnal
Former Employee
Aug 26, 2016

Welcome to the Excel Community

The Excel Community is a place we've built for all of you. You can learn more about how to do something with Excel, discuss your work, and connect with experts that build and use the product. With ov...
excel
Formulas and Functions
JesusSP's avatar
JesusSP
Copper Contributor
Jun 18, 2026

Hi everyone, I'm having an issue in Excel 365, which I've also noticed in Excel 2019 and Excel 2021. It turns out that when typing a formula or function, there are times when Excel doesn't calculate the result and simply displays the text as it is—for example, =SUM(A1:A10).

 

I've already checked that the cell format is set to Number/General and verified that the 'Show Formulas' option is turned off, but I still can't find the root of the problem.

 

It's worth mentioning that this issue is intermittent and only happens on rare occasions, both in existing and new workbooks, and it doesn't always happen with the same functions. Is this a known bug or some kind of anomaly in Excel?

GeorgieAnne's avatar
GeorgieAnne
Iron Contributor
Jul 06, 2026

Hello frank09​ 

Are you sure of:

A) There is no "'" (Apostrophe) as the first character in the formula?

B) Is Calculation set to Manual?

C) Is the workbook corrupted?

D) Do you have any formulas that are "Broken" examples would be #REF!, or #NAME! or any circular references? 

Please report back and let us know.

GiGi