Rather than going through cell by cell, Excel offers you a fast way to view formulas. Here is a technique you might not have thought of.
The file and exercise are in the Viewing Formulas flle.
Here is a small worksheet we used in the Goal Seek lesson.
Now suppose we wanted to see the underlying formulas. Here is a way to do it in two quick steps.
First, open up a second view of this worksheet. Go to the Window menu and select New Window.
Then go to this new view, then to the Tools menu; there, select Options.
In the options menu, select the View tab. Then in the bottom section, Window options, check the Formulas box and then click OK.
You now see the formulas displayed in this second window.
We like setting up a second window like this to view formulas, rather than changing the view back and forth on just one window. If you see a formula that you need to change, you can change the formula in the normal view, then switch to the second window to see the formula change.
Using the formula view can also be helpful for understanding long formulas, such as Nested If statements.
When done with the second window with the formula view, you can just click the upper right hand corner to close that view (careful- not the far upper right corner, which would close out Excel).
Take advantage of this quick way to view formulas on new worksheets done by others or to check out and modify your own worksheets.