[ms office - 2007] Excel formulas and formatting not working

[reggiep]

Strange one this!

 

I am knocking up a spreadsheet of my year 7 students to import in to a web based exam site. I have set up a formula to generate a random number as the users passwords. I have also changed the formatting of the date e.g. changed from 31 July 1997 to 31/07/1997

 

Anyway neither settings work. The formula just sits in the cell without actually showing the result and the formatted cell still shows the old format.

 

I have found a part fix on google where it suggested pressing F2 then F9 and return. This does update the cell but I have 400 cells to do and I'm worried that it might happen to the staff or students as well so I'm preparing for the storm.

 

Any ideas?

[DrPerceptron]

In Office 2007 there's a calculate button onb the Formula tab which has the Calculation options etc - perhaps you need to change it to automatically?

 

If it's fomatted sims data into O2k7 (or 2010) I've never been able to use excel formulaes etc to do anything with the data, I always had to export as unformatted text/csv data.

[reggiep]

I did export from SIMS, thanks for the heads up. I'll remember that if I can.