Setting a cell equal to another worksheet cell fails (sometimes)

[Guest]

I have a workbook with three sheets. In the first sheet I have a column (A1
thru A68) of stock symbols (ie - AAPL, AGR, APCS, etc) manually entered and
formatted as text. On a second sheet I have entered the formulae
='first sheet'!A1 in cell A1 and ='first sheet'!A2 in cell
C1 and so on. Several of the cells on the second sheet display the proper
info such as "AAPL" but many of the cells only display the entered formula
"='first sheet'!Ax". The formatting for all the cells in the second sheet is
the same (general). I have tried changing this formatting, but nothing seems
to work.

I have found that I can sometimes edit the formula and by deleting and
re-entering the "Ax" portion of the formula, it will sometimes bring up the
proper display. But this does not always work.

 

[Guest]

Hi

Make sure your cells in sheet 2 are formatted as General BEFORE you type
your formula in. If they are formatted as Text, you will get the result you
are.

Andy.

 

[Guest]

Wow !

Worked fine. I did run into a small glitch in that I formated the row with
the formulae as "general" and then tried a copy from a cell functioning
properly - it didn't work. So I tried retyping it into a blank cell (which
then worked) and then I copied that cell to the remaining cells, they all
worked. Something about copying a cell that was NOT formatted before entry -
is being carried into the target cell ?

In any case, thanks Andy - that solved my problem !

Richard