How to Print Formulas in Excel Instead of Their Results

When you are working in Excel for school or work, one of the more important things that you can learn is how to use formulas. But, by default, any formula that you use will display the result of that formula, so anyone evaluating your work on the printed page won’t be able to tell if you are using the correct formula.

If you have a project that you need to submit and you want to show the formula rather than the result, then there is a way that you can elect to display the formula rather than the result, then print that displayed formula.

 

How to Show and Print Formulas in an Excel Spreadsheet

The steps in this article were performed in Microsoft Excel 2013. This guide assumes that you have a spreadsheet that contains at least one formula, and that you want to print that spreadsheet with the formula displayed, rather than the result of that formula. Note that any cells containing data that isn’t a formula will still display and print the same way. Find out more about printing in Excel if you need to customize the way that the data prints on your page.

Step 1: Open the spreadhseet containing the formulas that you want to print.

 

Step 2: Click the Formulas tab at the top of the window.

how show and print formulas excel 2013

 

 

Step 3: Click the Show Formulas button.

how print formulas excel 2013

 

 

Step 3: Click the File tab at the top-left of the window.

print with formulas instead of results in excel

 

 

Step 4: Click the Print button.

excel 2013 print menu

 

 

Step 5: Confirm that your formulas are visible in the Print Preview, then click the Print button.

print excel formulas

 

 

If you would like to go back to displaying the formula results after this, simply go back to the Formulas tab and click the Show Formulas button again.

 

If you’re having trouble identifying which column a particular cell belongs to when it’s printed beyond the first page, then find out about printing the top row on every page in Excel. This is a really handy option when you have multi-page documents that you need to print.