Cheers for the help folks. I just thought there would be something built into excel that would let me show those marking it how i got the answers, as they wanted to see the formulas. Due to the reports i issue out i hardcode them. I pretty much failed for that reason. Now trying to think of whether or not there is a built in mechanism within excel where the value copied and pasted from the formula will now show the formula. If that makes any sense. either way i failed out of using "my best practice", so so soooooooooooo annoying as its the simplest part of the process and i should have passed easily. SIGH