Missing Formula Bar in Excel (for Mac)

Posted on February 1, 2010 by David Eedle

My Formula bar was missing in Excel (Mac). Click on View > Formula Bar and the option was ticked. Tried on untick – but stayed ticked.

Closed all other tool bars, no help.

Found solution: hold down CONTROL and SHIFT keys and start Excel. Resets the tool bars and the Formula bar magically reappeared.

51 thoughts on “Missing Formula Bar in Excel (for Mac)”

JT on April 22, 2010 at 4:17 am said:

It worked!!!!!! Thank you so much!!!!!

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Toni on July 23, 2010 at 12:55 am said:

David,
Thank you for the help. I see this action restore the formula bar as a ‘floating’ bar. One question still: How do I get the formula bar to become permanent into the spreadsheet.
This does not seem to be possible. Thanks again 🙂

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David Eedle on July 23, 2010 at 5:26 am said:

Hi Toni
I’m not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean docking the bar to the top or side of your screen? In which case just drag it to the place and it will automatically attach itself.
The mystery for me is why it randomly disappears!
David

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Doc on August 12, 2010 at 7:35 am said:

Saved the day! Thanks

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Eleanor on January 26, 2011 at 9:33 am said:

I have just found that my formula bar is under the Mac menu bar – only a little is showing and I can’t get hold of it to move it
Is there a ctrl + sequence I could use to make it move?
I ried the Ctrl+Shift on starting Excel but that didn’t make any difference
Don’t know how I managed to get it up there!
Thanks for your help
Eleanor

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David Eedle on January 27, 2011 at 5:16 am said:

Hi Eleanor
I haven’t had this problem. Have you tried turning off the menu bar, closing Excel, then restarting Excel and turning the menu bar back on?
David

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andrew on February 4, 2011 at 9:37 am said:

Hello Eleanor / David. I have same problem with formul bar hidden under menu bar. Have tried everything I have found online but can’t seem to fix it. Including changing screen resolution and ctrl shift reset. Help. Andy

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Janet on April 19, 2011 at 12:45 am said:

Thank you!! That was really frustrating me and what an easy solution. Weird

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Richard Haseldine on June 28, 2011 at 7:56 pm said:

Thanks David, this worked a treat and saved my day!!
Richard

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Veronica on July 27, 2011 at 3:25 am said:

Worked for me as well. Thanks.

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Greg on September 28, 2011 at 9:36 am said:

I had the same problem as Elanor/David/etc and could also see that the formula bar was hidden behind the menu bar… But there seemed to be no way of moving it. So I searched on AltaVista (Yahoo!) and this page of David’s was the top hit on my search… I tried David’s suggestion, and “it just worked”! Boom!! 🙂 Thanks David!! Greg

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Laura McLean on January 18, 2012 at 4:27 am said:

Thank you!

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David on February 24, 2012 at 7:44 am said:

Thanks for the suggestion. I ran into this problem several days ago and am still seeking a solution. I have lost (missing-not hidden) my formula bar in Excel on my 13 inch MacBook Pro and am having trouble restoring it. After failure with many attempts to restore the missing Formula Bar, I shut down Excel and held down CONTROL and SHIFT keys and started Excel. It did “magically” restore the Formula bar however it is not a permanent condition. When I “force quit” Excel or shut down and/or restart my computer, the Formula Bar does not reappear when I open an Excel file. I can go through the same procedure and I can reestablish it each time, and it will remain with Excel until I shut down again. Is there a way to make the fix permanent without trashing files. As a footnote, under Preferences/View in Excel, the “Show Formula Bar” is checked along with the “Show Status Bar”, the latter of which is not a problem.
Thanks,

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LuAnn on March 7, 2012 at 1:19 pm said:

I have tried all solutions in this conversation and none worked. I can get a ‘floating’ formula through the View menu but I would like to have a permanent formula bar on the menu.

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David Eedle on March 7, 2012 at 1:30 pm said:

LuAnn, sounds like you need to drag your toolbar panel up to the Toolbar at the top. It should ‘dock’, eg attach itself and become a part of the Tool Bar.
You can do this with pretty much all tool bar panels in Microsoft products.
David

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jaime@inlanguageradio.com on April 14, 2012 at 8:07 am said:

My formula bar also ‘hides’ under my Tool Bar and I too can get it to reappear by restarting Excel and holding the Control and Shift keys. And like David above, the problem re-occurs whenever I restart the app. I’m using Excel 2008 with a MacBook Pro using 10.7.3

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Vivien on April 26, 2012 at 11:33 pm said:

HI I just found another fix after going crazy and not always wanting to re-open and close..
View Full Screen. When I come out of full screen it is hidden then view full screen, voila there again.

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Walt P on May 10, 2012 at 3:33 pm said:

Thanks a bunch! It even worked for me on my Windows 7 laptop. You ended a frustrating couple of hours wondering what happened to the formula bar. It does apparently mean you have to always start Excel in “Safe mode”, but I don’t restart that often. I wish they would just tell you up front about this kind of thing…

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LauraP on April 16, 2013 at 6:43 pm said:

So much thanks!!! it works…Great!!

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captainemily@gmail.com on April 20, 2013 at 9:04 am said:

OMG you are a live saver

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Tania on May 6, 2013 at 1:09 pm said:

fantastic, worked for me 🙂

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Kim on May 26, 2013 at 9:59 pm said:

I’m with LuAnn. I’m using Excel 2008 for Mac on my Mac Mini and my cell contents/formula bar is not attached to the Excel window. I can move it on top of the toolbars but it never attaches itself or reinserts itself where it should be. I cannot find any setting that will make the cell contents/formula bar appear as a toolbar like the other toolbars. I tried David’s recommendation to exit Excel and then open it while holding down the shift and control keys, but this did not fix the problem. Does anyone have a solution?

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Jane on June 4, 2013 at 12:59 pm said:

I agree. I cannot get the cell content/formula bar to lock onto the Excel window. What the heck!?

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- Frustrated on July 9, 2013 at 2:35 am said:
  
  Buy a Mac
  Change to iWorks!!!
  
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  - David Eedle on July 9, 2013 at 2:39 am said:
    
    Actually this *is* for Mac Excel. Except this is for an older version. I now use Mac Office 2011 and haven’t had the problem so have not needed to find a solution for the newer Excel.
  - Frustrated on July 11, 2013 at 12:27 am said:
    
    To David Eadie
    Very expensive for this day and age.
    Typical Microsoft “Shovelware”, get out a quick and dirty, load all the debugging responsibility onto the trusting souls who bought it. No attempt to support the buyer who paid good money for nothing, let the “Bloggers” do the work for free.
    Not me, I am switching to Mac iWorks, it works, and at a fraction of the price.
    That is why I junked the Microsoft based computer in favour of a Mac, after having used a PC since 1982.
    
    Review on Cnet
    Pros
    Seems more stable in some ways. I would replace all the new bells and whistles for a stable program that works as it is supposed to.
    Cons
    It erases text and replaces it with asterisks in Microsoft Word (pretty much the worst possible sort of bug). The autosave saves asterisks as well, so the data is definitively lost. I lost 3 days of work!
    Summary
    I could not reinstall Office 2008 after installing 2011 (the toolbar wouldn’t work) so ended up reinstalling the operating system. Disaster all around. Microsft needs to get its act together.
- frustrated on July 9, 2013 at 2:39 am said:
  
  Jane: If you have a Mac (I don’t know about PC), you can see the formula bar in “View…Full Screen”, but then you cannot see the Excel Menu!!
  Go figure out the genius programmer who did this, must have an I.Q. of a hibernating Newt.
  
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Frustrated on July 7, 2013 at 1:06 am said:

The problem occurred for me when I opted for full screen view. The formula bar only appears from under the Apple Menu bar in full screen view. None of the measures mentioned above enables me to permanently view the formula bar when not in full screen view. Any suggestions welcome before I junk Excel for Mac Numbers

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Ivana Gilmartin on August 24, 2013 at 10:02 am said:

Thanks it worked so easily after having searched for ages

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- Hank Visser on September 22, 2013 at 11:34 am said:
  
  So … at the end of all this chatter, HOW do you attach the formula bar to the Mac excel tool bar?
  
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Hank Visser on September 22, 2013 at 11:32 am said:

So … at the end of all this chatter, HOW do you attach the formula bar to the Mac excel tool bar?

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A---B on September 24, 2013 at 10:12 pm said:

I used to be able to put the formula bar fields into my general toolbar using customise toolbars.

Since an update, I can no longer do this.

Other replies say this was never an option.
It was an option – any work arounds??

I HATE the floating formula bar.

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Adam H on October 10, 2013 at 10:35 am said:

I hate it too. It used to just attach, and now it won’t.
Actually, my first few weeks at this job with this computer and this Office for Mac, it was attached and fine. Then I closed it once by accident, and had to open the formula bar again, but it has been floating ever since.

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- DSS on October 10, 2013 at 11:16 pm said:
  
  You can see the bar attached if you
  “View” .. “Full Screen”
  “View” .. “Formula Bar”
  But then you will not be able to see any other file until you get of of full screen mode
  Annoying, totally unnecessary meddlesome interference of what was a relatively good program.
  But I liked Lotus 1-2-3 better, even in it’s early versions.
  
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Jette on November 25, 2013 at 7:59 pm said:

Yaaaay! Thank you so much! I’ve been suffering from formula bar withdrawal for much too long!

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- DSS on November 26, 2013 at 4:46 am said:
  
  Jette, you magnificent person.
  Thank you. Maybe MS will offer you a job cleaning up their app?
  
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Hannes Hofer on December 31, 2013 at 12:05 am said:

I found the solution elsewhere on the web: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macoffice2008-macexcel/formula-bar-does-not-show-when-i-open-excel-2008/3508190d-440e-49e5-8b91-282cc4c0c482

If your user libraries do not show u in Finder, go to Terminal and type chflags nohidden ~/Library/

It worked for me!

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kathybryson on February 10, 2014 at 1:40 am said:

Thank you! You totally saved my spreadsheet!

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O on April 17, 2014 at 4:18 am said:

Thank you! I would have never thought to do this! It worked!

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Mike on April 17, 2014 at 4:34 pm said:

Thanks very much worked for me David on my 13 inch MacAir

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Eduardo on August 12, 2014 at 9:51 pm said:

CTRL+SHIFT is a life saver!!!

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Tommi on October 8, 2014 at 5:33 pm said:

Thank you! That worked; I’ve been professionally using excel for years, normally not facing a problem unsolvable. This one was tricky. Thank you for sharing this info.

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Ron on November 9, 2014 at 4:27 pm said:

Go to: Excel/Preferences/View/Click “Show Formula Bar by default”/OK and you are done

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sfdsg on November 30, 2014 at 7:45 am said:

You are THE GOD!!!!!
Save my life!

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Jane on December 16, 2015 at 10:18 am said:

Thank you. It suddenly disappeared last week and was making me NUTS. So you saved my sanity.

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les on July 6, 2016 at 4:27 pm said:

Thanks for that piece of advice David. Yours was the first of the hits returned in an internet search I tried and it worked perfectly.

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- DS S. on July 6, 2016 at 9:35 pm said:
  
  Nice
  
  I programmed my first computer at the Uni of Toronto in 1974. A mainframe. We had to book a place 2 weeks in advance, wear gloves, cap and mask. The process involved making punch cards in Fortran language, which were fed into the computer that was set up using wires and jacks like an old telephone exchange. The computer filed a small room. Despite that, it was easier to use than a modern PC!!
  
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Mad on May 11, 2017 at 7:46 pm said:

This is amazing. Somehow my default setting was to not have the formula bar. I have been adding the formula bar every single time I was using excel. I couldn’t find any information on how to KEEP it there. This seems to have worked.
THANK YOU!

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Evelyn Wegner on May 27, 2017 at 1:35 pm said:

Thank you so much! Your solution worked a treat! Been frustrated by the disappearing formula bar for some time now. Appreciate you sharing the solution!

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JudyAnn on July 21, 2017 at 8:16 am said:

Thank goodness, it worked. The only help I found that did. Thank you!

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