Excel 2024: See Intermediate Calculations

My friend Mike Girvin at the ExcelisFun YouTube channel has a great trick when explaining a long formula. Mike will select part of the formula in the formula bar and press F9 to calculate just that part of the formula. It is a cool trick, but you must remember to press Escape or you will hard-code the intermediate results in the formula.

In 2023, the Excel team provided a better alternative. If you select part of the formula in the formula and pause for a few seconds, a tooltip appears with the intermediate results. Here is an example showing the array stored in the Passcodes named range:

This feature also works if you are editing a formula in a cell. Below, a tiny tooltip of "0" shows that the date stored in A10 is not a workday.

Note that this new feature is related to the Evaluate Formula feature found on the Formulas tab. Below, the same formula is shown in Evaluate Formula. One more press of the Evaluate function will show the result of the intermediate formula. While Evaluate Formula allows you to Step In and drill down, it requires you to evaluate the formula in the same sequence that Excel would use. The new feature to show the intermediate result of any portion of the formula is more flexible.