Watch Excel Video 199 to see two quick ways to better understand the formulas on your spreadsheet. The first trick is Show Formulas, a quick way to show all of the formulas on a spreadsheet. Holding down the control key and the key with ` and ~ (tilde) on it is a shortcut to do the same thing. You can toggle Show Formulas on and off when you’re finished. Show Formulas is a fast way to understand what’s going on a spreadsheet you may have inherited or haven’t used in a while.
Evaluate Formula brings up a window that steps through each piece of the formula in the cell you clicked in. Each time you click Evaluate, Excel calculates the underlined piece of the formula. Evaluate Formula works from the inside out until the entire formula is calculated. If you have an error, Evaluate Formula will also show you the step of the formula that’s generating the error so you can get to the bottom of it.
I hope these two ideas will save you some time, especially when you have complicated spreadsheets and formulas to work with.
