Excel for Mac 2008 Formula Display Issue

[macbookprointn]

Hi,

I have been using Excel 2008 without incident until yesterday when it now shows formulas in the formula window in what seems like nonsensical characters. An example of one simple formula to just subtract two cells in a sheet shows the following instead of the normal formula one would expect with column and row numbers/letters:
=R[-4]C-R[-2]C

I may have done something that I don't realize but I would consider myself an advanced Excel user and have never seen this before. Any help someone from the Mac SBU or otherwise would be much appreciated to clarify what I can do to fix this issue. Thanks.

 

[NAG]

Did you hit the ANOVA stat function or something?

 

[Raid]

The formula view you are seeing is a different way of defining a cell range. For example instead of cell references looking like "A1" you'd probably see "R1C1" (R=row, C=column) in the example you have it looks like it's referencing a cell four rows up (and in the same column) minus the cell two rows up (and in the same column)

You probably accidently changed the formula preferences in the Tools>Options submenu. Look for "R1C1 Reference Style" in the General tab and uncheck it.

 

[macbookprointn]

Thanks - that was the issue

This was the problem - not sure how it got triggered. Thank you and all the replies for the help.

The formula view you are seeing is a different way of defining a cell range. For example instead of cell references looking like "A1" you'd probably see "R1C1" (R=row, C=column) in the example you have it looks like it's referencing a cell four rows up (and in the same column) minus the cell two rows up (and in the same column)

You probably accidently changed the formula preferences in the Tools>Options submenu. Look for "R1C1 Reference Style" in the General tab and uncheck it.