Excel 365 Formula Bar font is different BUT only when displaying a formula

Anonymous

Dear Excel MVP,

Some months ago something changed in my Excel 365 Formula Bar display. The default font for new workbooks has always been Arial 8...no change there. The formula bar for text values displays correctly Arial 8 and if I click on the formula bar I can change the font as required. However, for any cell containing a formula the font displayed in the formular bar is not Arial 8, but appears to be Consolas 8. See the screen clip below. In addition if I click on the formula bar the font and size are greyed out and can't be changed.

This bug appeared following an Office 365 update. I am a Microsoft 365 Insider and all my software is 100% up-to-date.

Can you please advise what the problem is and how to resolve it?

Cheers,
Geoff Frost

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

Hi David,

First of all, many of the participants of this thread think that this is a bug. Unfortunately, it isn't. As it was announced in this Microsoft Excel Blog las year:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/excel-s-formula-bar-gets-a-new-look/ba-p/3902462

There are only two problems with monospaced Consolas in the formula bar: that it is monospaced, and that it is Consolas.

I found the example in the linked article really biased, hence frustrating: what percentage of Excel users write formulas like that as the dominant part of their work crying out for monospaced character? Formulas without numbers and cell references? They are arguing with programming ****, but Excel formula bar is in most of the cases not a programming interface.

I use Excel, Excel VBA, Power Pivot on a regular basis, I write short and long formulas, and I never missed this trash. On the contrary, I really hate it!

The formulas became longer and this new spacing breaks words into letters. Consolas is a disaster, its accentuated slashed zero attracts the look, but that only distracts attention from grasping the formula's meaning. The 3 and 5 are ugly, the latter is harder to distinguish from B or E than by using any other character. Functions with . separation will be spaced before and after the . , so instead of keeping together the function name as an undivided expression, it splits it up into 3 parts.

I discovered recently that Google Sheets use monospaced font in the formula bar, but it is not Consolas: the zero is almost the same, but the other numbers are more readable.

Was Microsoft afraid that users would switch to Google Sheets because of this feature?

Dénes

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Anonymous

This has been fixed!!!!

You can disable it under Options > Formulas > Use monospace font for all formulas.

Excel’s Formula Bar Gets a New Look (microsoft.com)

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Anonymous

Thanks for this Dénes! So they have simply dropped this **** on us and don't even make it optional.

Also good to know for the future that this forum is only for venting, as nobody from Microsoft has said a word.

Thanks again!

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70 additional answers

Anonymous

2024-03-21T07:32:39+00:00

Hello, GeoffreyFrost1.

I raised this concern on our tech community to help us with it. Let's wait for their fix and I hope they can provide an update for our Microsoft Office Excel soon.

Please let me know if this helped us to answer your concern. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below.

Kind regards, Kevin
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Anonymous

2024-03-18T03:23:10+00:00
Hello, GeoffreyFrost1

Thank you for reaching out Microsoft Community. My name is Kevin and I'm happy to help you. I totally understand your situation. I do apologize for the inconvenience if you are experiencing a bug with your Excel 365. Rest assure that I will provide assistant with regards to it.

If the font in the Formula Bar of Excel 365 appears different only when displaying a formula, it's possible that the font settings for displaying formulas are different from the font settings for displaying regular cell contents.

Please perform these steps:
1. Click on the "File" tab in Excel
2. Select "Options"
3. Click on the "Advanced" tab
4. Scroll down until you find the "Display options for this worksheet" section.
5. In this section, you'll find options for "Show formulas in cells instead of their calculated results" and "Show formula bar."
6. Check the font settings for the formula bar by clicking on the "Font" button next to the "Show formula bar" option.
7. Adjust Font Settings. Then click "OK" to apply the changes and close the Font window.
If the issue persists or if you're unable to adjust the font settings using the Excel Options, you can try resetting Excel's settings to their defaults. Here's how:
1. Close Excel.
2. Press the Windows key + R to open the Run dialog box.
3. Type "excel.exe /safe" (without quotes) and press Enter. This will open Excel in safe mode with default settings.
4. Check if the font in the Formula Bar appears consistent with the font settings for regular cell contents when displaying formulas.
If the issue is resolved in safe mode, it indicates that the problem may be related to custom settings or add-ins in your regular Excel environment. You can try disabling add-ins or resetting Excel settings to troubleshoot further.

Please let me know if these information helped us to answer the concern and resolved the issue. Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below.

Kind regards, Kevin
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