You opened a spreadsheet someone else built. Numbers everywhere. Totals at the bottom. Percentages running down column G. And you have absolutely no idea where any of it comes from. Sound familiar? That is the moment when knowing how to show formulas in Excel stops being a nice-to-have and becomes the single most useful trick in your toolbox.
Most Excel users see only the results — the calculated numbers that sit in each cell. The formulas behind those numbers stay hidden by default. That is great for daily work because clean numbers are easier to read. But when you need to audit a workbook, debug a broken total, or hand off a model to a colleague, those hidden formulas become a problem. You need a way to flip the view so every cell reveals its underlying formula instead of its calculated value. That is exactly what the Show Formulas mode does.
This guide covers every method to display formulas — the famous keyboard shortcut, the ribbon button, the FORMULATEXT function for individual cells, and the trick for printing a formula sheet. We also walk through the common gotchas: why some cells still show numbers, what happens to column widths, and how to keep formulas visible only on one worksheet without affecting others.
The fastest way to show all formulas in an Excel worksheet is the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + ` (Control plus the grave accent / backtick). On a US keyboard, the backtick sits in the top-left corner, just below the Escape key and to the left of the number 1. Press it once and every formula in the active sheet appears in place of its result. Press it again and Excel flips back to showing values.
On a Mac, the equivalent is Control + ` as well — note that it is Control, not Command. Some Mac keyboards bury the backtick behind a modifier, so if Ctrl+` does nothing, check the key just above the Tab key on the left edge.
This toggle is per-worksheet, not per-workbook. If you have three sheets open and press Ctrl+` on Sheet1, only Sheet1 changes its display mode. Sheet2 and Sheet3 keep showing values. That is genuinely useful when you want to audit one tab without making the whole file look like a wall of text.
One thing the shortcut does that surprises new users: it widens every column automatically. Excel does this so the formula text fits inside the cell. When you toggle back, columns return to their original widths. Your data is not damaged. The widening is purely visual and reverses cleanly.
Not a keyboard person? Excel hides the same toggle on the ribbon. Open the Formulas tab. Look at the Formula Auditing group near the right side of the ribbon. You will see a button labeled Show Formulas with a small icon that looks like a magnifying glass over an fx symbol. Click it once to enable formula view. Click it again to turn it off.
The button has exactly the same effect as Ctrl+`. It toggles the same sheet-level setting. So if you press the shortcut and then click the button, you get the opposite behavior — they cancel each other out. Pick whichever method you find faster and stick with it.
A nice touch: the button stays visually pressed (highlighted) while formula view is active. That gives you a clear indicator at a glance, especially handy if you forget which mode you are in after switching between sheets.
Press Ctrl + ` (backtick, top-left of US keyboards) to toggle Show Formulas mode on the active worksheet. Press it again to return to normal value view. The setting is per-sheet, not per-workbook, so each tab toggles independently.
Sometimes you do not want to flip the whole sheet. You just want to see what formula sits inside cell C5 without leaving your current view. Excel 2013 and later include a function called FORMULATEXT that returns the formula of a referenced cell as a text string.
Type =FORMULATEXT(C5) in any empty cell. The result is the literal text of whatever formula lives in C5 — for example, =SUM(A1:A10)/2. If C5 contains a plain number or text rather than a formula, FORMULATEXT returns the #N/A error.
This function is brilliant for building audit columns. Put your data in column A, your formulas in column B, and a FORMULATEXT column in C that mirrors what each B-cell does. Anyone reviewing the workbook can read both the result and the logic side by side. It is also the cleanest way to document a complex model in the same file as the model itself.
Toggle on Show Formulas and you might notice something odd. Most cells now reveal formulas, but a few stubbornly keep showing numbers. That is not a bug. Those cells genuinely contain hard-coded values, not formulas. They were typed in directly or pasted as values, so there is no formula to reveal.
This is actually one of the best reasons to use Show Formulas mode. Mixed workbooks — where some cells calculate and others are hard-coded — are a common source of bugs. When you flip to formula view, the hard-coded cells stand out instantly because they still show plain numbers while everything else shows text. It is a fast visual audit for finding inputs that should probably be formulas, or formulas that have been accidentally overwritten with static values.
Printing a formula view is useful for documentation, training, code reviews, or just keeping a paper trail of how a critical model works. Here is the process. Turn on Show Formulas (Ctrl+` or the ribbon button). Open Page Layout. Set the orientation to Landscape — formulas are usually wider than numeric results, so portrait mode forces awkward column breaks.
Next, set the print area. Click Page Layout > Print Area > Set Print Area after selecting only the cells you actually want. Otherwise Excel may try to print thousands of empty columns that now look filled because of the wider formula view.
Add gridlines and headings so the printout matches the on-screen layout. Page Layout > Sheet Options > Gridlines: tick the Print box. Same for Headings. Print preview before you commit — formula sheets can balloon to twenty pages if you skip this step.
Press Ctrl + ` (Ctrl + backtick) to toggle the active sheet between value view and formula view. Works on Windows and Mac (use Control on Mac, not Command). Fastest method when you know the key location.
Open Formulas tab > Formula Auditing group > Show Formulas. Same effect as the shortcut. Button stays highlighted while formula view is active, giving you a clear visual indicator of the current mode.
Use =FORMULATEXT(cell) in any cell to display the formula of a referenced cell as text. Returns #N/A if the referenced cell has no formula. Available in Excel 2013 and later versions of Microsoft 365.
Use Ctrl + ` (backtick, just below Escape on US layouts). On UK keyboards same position. On German QWERTZ, the backtick is Shift + the key right of Backspace. Use the ribbon button if your layout buries the key.
Use Control + ` — NOT Command + `. The Control key is required. On some Mac keyboards the backtick lives above Tab on the left edge of the keyboard.
Ctrl + ` works in most browsers but can clash with browser shortcuts. Use Formulas > Show Formulas on the ribbon for reliable toggle behavior regardless of browser.
iOS and Android Excel apps lack a global Show Formulas toggle. Tap a single cell to view its formula in the input bar. Open the file on desktop for full formula audits.
If you opened a file and every cell already shows a formula, someone before you left Show Formulas turned on. Press Ctrl+` and the sheet returns to normal. Or open Formulas > Show Formulas on the ribbon and click to toggle off. The setting saves with the workbook, so the next person who opens the file will see whatever mode was active when it was last saved.
For workbooks you share widely, it is good practice to always save with Show Formulas off. Most recipients expect values, not formulas, and the wider columns can make the file look broken at first glance. A quick toggle before you close and save keeps everyone on the same page.
What if you want to display formulas in only one column or one section — say, an audit column — but keep the rest of the sheet showing values? The global toggle cannot do this. The trick is to use FORMULATEXT in a dedicated column or in cells next to your formulas. That gives you a per-cell view without flipping the whole sheet.
Another approach is to format the formula cells as text before you enter them. Select the cells, set Format Cells > Number > Text, then type your formulas. Because the cells are formatted as text, Excel stores the formula as literal text and does not calculate it. The downside is that those cells no longer return real results — they just display the formula syntax. So this trick is for documentation pages only, not live models.
Beginners sometimes confuse the formula bar with Show Formulas mode. The formula bar (the long text box above row 1) always shows the formula of whichever single cell is currently selected. That is built-in and cannot be turned off without hiding the bar entirely (View > Formula Bar). It shows one formula at a time.
Show Formulas mode is different. It changes how the cells themselves display content. Every cell with a formula reveals its formula directly in the grid, all at once. So the formula bar is for inspecting one cell. Show Formulas is for auditing or printing the whole sheet.
You can also display the formula bar across multiple lines by dragging its bottom edge down. That is useful when a single formula is long enough to wrap awkwardly in the default one-line bar. Combine an expanded formula bar with Show Formulas mode and you get the most complete view of how a workbook actually works.
If the keyboard shortcut refuses to fire, the most common cause is a keyboard layout mismatch. The backtick lives in different places on UK, French, German, and Scandinavian keyboards. On a UK keyboard, the backtick is to the left of the 1 key — same as US. On a German QWERTZ layout, the backtick requires Shift + the key to the right of Backspace. On some Mac keyboards, the backtick is hidden behind an Option modifier entirely.
If you cannot find a working backtick combo, just use the ribbon: Formulas > Show Formulas. That always works regardless of keyboard layout. You can also pin the Show Formulas button to your Quick Access Toolbar by right-clicking it on the ribbon — that creates a permanent one-click button at the top of every Excel window.
Another rare issue: some macro-heavy workbooks override Ctrl+` with custom code. If a workbook has a Workbook_Open or Auto_Open macro that traps that shortcut, the toggle stops working. Disable macros temporarily (File > Options > Trust Center > Macro Settings) and the shortcut returns.
Once you make a habit of toggling Show Formulas on every new workbook you receive, you will catch errors faster than you ever did before. Hard-coded numbers in places they should not be. Inconsistent ranges (SUM(A1:A10) in one row, SUM(A1:A9) in the next). References to deleted sheets. Circular logic. All of these become obvious the moment formulas are visible.
Pair Show Formulas with Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents — both in the Formula Auditing group — and you have a full diagnostic kit. Trace Precedents draws arrows showing which cells feed the selected formula. Trace Dependents shows which other formulas use the selected cell. Together they let you walk through a model the same way a debugger walks through code.
The Evaluate Formula button in the same group is another close friend. Select a complex formula, click Evaluate Formula, and Excel steps through each calculation in order, showing you the intermediate result at every step. Use it when a formula returns a wrong answer and you cannot figure out which part is off.
Picture a finance team that just received a budget model from a former colleague. Twelve sheets. Hundreds of formulas. No documentation. Numbers that do not quite reconcile. The team flips Show Formulas on each sheet in turn and within an hour they have a full map of the logic. They find three SUMIF ranges that were typed wrong, two cells with hard-coded values that escaped into production, and one cross-sheet reference that still pointed at a backup file on an old laptop.
None of that gets noticed in normal value view. The numbers all look reasonable. But once formulas are exposed, the bugs jump out within minutes. That is the real value of Show Formulas — it turns invisible logic into visible text, and visible text into something you can actually review, comment on, and trust.
Excel Online (the web version) supports Show Formulas through the same ribbon button: Formulas > Show Formulas. The Ctrl+` shortcut works in most browsers but can clash with browser-level shortcuts (Firefox uses Ctrl+` for window switching on some platforms). If the shortcut behaves oddly, the ribbon button is always reliable.
Excel mobile apps (iOS, Android) do not currently offer a global Show Formulas toggle. You can still tap an individual cell to see its formula in the input bar at the top. For broader formula audits, open the workbook on a desktop where the full ribbon is available, then save it back to OneDrive if you need to continue on mobile.
Show Formulas is one of those tiny Excel features that pays back the effort to learn it within the first hour. Ctrl+` for the shortcut. Formulas > Show Formulas for the ribbon. FORMULATEXT for a single cell. Three methods, one purpose: reveal the logic behind your data so you can audit, debug, document, or hand it off cleanly.
The next time someone hands you a spreadsheet you have never seen before, your first reflex should be Ctrl+`. Within seconds you will know whether the file is a clean, well-built model or a tangle of hard-coded numbers pretending to be formulas. That single keystroke is one of the best investments of muscle memory an Excel user can make.