[SOLVED] Total cell shows formula, not result

[boboof]

Just added two new columns to an existing spreadsheet, and entered a formula to Sum the cells in the column above the formula cell. In a column of 49 cells, there are 3 data entries; the balance of cells in the column are currently blank.

The bottom cell shows the formula, and not the resulting sum. Yet the prior year columns in the same spreadsheet calculate and show the sum correctly.

Where did I go wrong. Formula is entered correctly =Sum(Cell1:Cell2)

Thanks
Bob

[stevesaunders]

Some other spreadsheets require you to use a colon in a formula
Open Office is different; it uses the semi-colon
=SUM(cell1;cell2)
try it: youl'll like it!
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Steve ~ Tennessee USA
Mac OS X 10.6.2 Open Office 3.1

[therabi]

[keme]

[stevesaunders]

sorry about that!
_________________
Steve ~ Tennessee USA
Mac OS X 10.6.2 Open Office 3.1

[boboof]

Sorry guys, and I do appreciate the help, but none of the above suggestions worked.

I am still getting the formula, not the result of the addition.

Just to be clear, my formula is =Sum(H2:H50) placed in cell H51, and I'm using OOo 3.2 on Linux.

I know this is simple and I'm being dense, especially since other columns in this spreadsheet total with no problem at all.

Bob

[Ed]

Is Tools>Options>Calc>View>Display>Formulas checked?

[ken johnson]

One possibility is that when the column was inserted some or all of the cells in the inserted column were formatted as Text. Inserted columns adopt the formatting of the cells in the column immediately to the left of the selected column(s) before the column(s) is(are) inserted.
Then when you typed your formula in to a Text formatted cell it was interpretted by Calc to be text, not a formula.
Changing the cell's formatting from Text to Number General is only part of the solution to such a problem because cell formatting has no effect on the type of data entered into a cell.
After changing the cell formatting to Number General, the formula, that Calc had initially and correctly interpretted to be text, has to be editted then re-entered.

When only a few cells need to be corrected then for each cell, the simplest steps to follow are...

1. Select
2. Press F2, double-click or click in the Input line of the Formula bar to enter Edit mode
3. Press any character key to add an extra character to the formula text
4. Press the Backspace key to remove the added character
5. Press Enter.

When a large number of cells need to be corrected the "Find & Replace" dialog can be used with "Search for" and "Replace with" both being ")" (without the speech marks).

Ken Johnson
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[boboof]

Thank you, Ken... that seemed to work, although I had to re-format a couple of times to get the two adjacent new columns and their totals to show the calculation, not the formula.

I'll mark this SOLVED at the top.

It's a shame OO0 requires all this help... there's no way it could exist without the wonderful information available on this forum.

Bob

[Villeroy]

Same with ANY other spreadsheet program.
Since 20+ years people do not understand the difference between text and number, valuie and formatting.
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