asked on

Hide formulas in formula bar

Folks,
I know I can hide the formula bar but here's my objective.
I am trying to teach my youngest son more about Excel. There is a section of tabs that are for exercises that need to be solved. If he gets the incorrect answer then his formula or function is incorrect and he get some message like "Try again - wrong results"
I'm considered conditional formatting but also looking for an alternative solution.

Martin Liss

Not exactly what you asked for but here's a little UDF that will show a formula in a cell.

Function GetFormula(cel As Range) As String
GetFormula = cel.Formula
End Function

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Frank Freese

ASKER

Martin,
I've got that already but thanks.

mvidas

Hi fh,

On a cell you want the formula hidden, go to the Format Cells window (control 1 or right-click/Format Cells or Home/Cells/Format/Format Cells). On the Protection tab are checkboxes for Locked and Hidden. When the worksheet is Protected, "Hidden" hides the formula, and "Locked" makes the cell unable to be changed.

To protect your sheet, go to the Home tab, the Cells group, the Format button, then Protect Sheet. Choose a password (or don't), and press OK. The cells you chose to hide formulas now display nothing in the formula bar.

Matt

Frank Freese

ASKER

Matt,
However, outside of hiding the formula bar, is there away to keep a formula from displaying in the formul bar....

mvidas

fh,

Yes, exactly as I described above. You need to check the protection "hidden" checkbox for every cell you want to hide the formula, then protect the sheet.

Matt

Frank Freese

ASKER

For example, if A1 = 1 and B1 = 3 then sum in C1 = 4. However, if the sum is anything other than 4, I would like the user to know that their formula is incorrect. Conditional formatting could get me there, but I was looking for some thing different. In other word, error checking the results on a cell

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Martin Liss

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mvidas

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