Fill cell with the above value in Excel fails

Question

In Excel I find all the blank cells in a column using F5 > Special > Blanks). I then fill the blanks with the value above using "= up arrow then CTL Enter." Usually works without a hitch. But, occasionally it fails.

For instance today I was able to fill in column C (date), then D (24-hour time) without issue, but then I tried to fill in column H (text). If cell H3 is the first blank cell, instead of the text from the cell above (H2), Excel puts =H2 not just in H3, but also in every blank cell in column H. What could be the cause?

I have tried: copying and pasting just the values back into column H, copying and pasting to a new column, pasting the data into a different spreadsheet.

Nothing seems to work.

Answer 1

When you format a cell as text, Excel doesn't respect the "=" as the start of a formula. Basically, anything you type gets entered in the cell verbatim.

I assume MS made this design decision because formulas either return text or a number and the formatting the destination cell doesn't really affect that.

The answer is to format the column as General and repeat your process. It should work then.