Viewing the formulas in your worksheet is a great technique to use when reviewing your spreadsheet for inconsistent formulas. In case you have forgotten, the method for doing this is clicking CTRL + ` (grave, which is located on the left-hand side of your keyboard beneath the tilde).
It sure would be handy if you could view your formulas and the results at the same time wouldn’t it? Well, as I have recently learned, it is not impossible to accomplish.
Follow the steps below to learn how:
- Click anywhere in the worksheet you want to view and click on CTRL + Home to go to cell A1.
- In version 2007, in the Window Group, click New Window from the View menu.
- Click in the Window group and click View Side by Side on the View tab.
You should now have two identical copies of your worksheet in view.
- In one of the windows, click CTRL + ` to display the formulas.
You can now simultaneously scroll through your worksheet and see the formulas in one window and their values in the other.
The reason for the first step, going to cell A1, is that when you open a New Window, MS Excel automatically scrolls the window to the top left corner and makes A1 the active cell. If the original window did not have A1 as the active cell, your rows and/or columns would not be in sync for scrolling purposes.
Please note that when you open a New Window, any split or frozen panes and custom Zoom settings will be removed. To be certain you do not lose these settings, close the new window first. You can identify the new window by the :2 after the file name in the window header.