Excel Shortcuts - Show Formulas

Learn Excel From MrExcel, Podcast Episode 2129: CONTROL And The Grave Accent To See All Formulas.

Alright. So, someone sent in this spreadsheet. We need to figure out how the spreadsheet is working. A fast way to see all formulas, there's a key on the US keyboard, just underneath the ESCAPE key. It has the ~ from Spanish and the backwards accent, the accent aigu, from French.

If you hold down CONTROL and that key, it will go into show formulas mode, right, and in show formulas mode, each column gets a little bit wider and you get to see the formula, and look at this. Someone plugged this formula, looks like they weren't earning the bonus, and so they changed the NEEDED FOR BONUS. That would have been hard to see in this mode, and so, toggle, by the way. So, you press CONTROL+` to go back, and then CONTROL+` to see the formulas over here.

Look at that. Here we have a series of numbers and they’re totalling at the bottom. They didn't total with the SUM function. They totalled, just who knows, with a calculator or with a quick sum or maybe they added it up in their heads, and so you'll discover those kinds of things using CONTROL and the ` -- one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks for stopping by. We’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.