How to replace formulas with their values in Excel

Alexander Frolov by , updated on

Here are good tips to save your time - 2 fastest ways to replace formulas in Excel cells with their values. Both hints work for Excel 365 - 2013.

You may have different reasons for converting formulas to values:

  • To be able to quickly insert values to other workbooks or sheets without wasting time on copy/paste special.
  • To keep your original formulas unknown when you send a workbook to another person (for example, your retail markup to the wholesale price).
  • To prevent the result from modifying when the numbers in the linking cells change.
  • Save the result of the rand() formula.
  • If you have a lot of complex formulas in your workbook which make recalculating really slow. And you cannot switch the "Workbook calculation" option to the manual mode.

Converting formulas to values using Excel shortcuts

Suppose, you have the formula to extract domain names from URLs.

You need to replace its results with values.
Excel formula to extract domain names from URLs

Just follow the simple steps below:

  1. Select all the cells with formulas that you want to convert.
  2. Press Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Ins to copy formulas and their results to clipboard.
  3. Press Shift + F10 and then V to paste only values back to Excel cells.
    Shift + F10 + V is the shortest way to use Excel "Paste special - values only" dialog.

That's it! If this way is still not fast enough for you, have a look at the next tip.
Converting formulas to values using Excel shortcuts

Replacing formulas with values in a couple of mouse clicks

Have you ever had a feeling that some routine tasks in Excel that can be done in a few clicks take too much of your time? If so, you are welcome to our Ultimate Suite for Excel.

With this collection of 70+ time saving tools, you can quickly remove all blank cells, rows and columns; move columns by drag-n-dropping; count and sum by color, filter by the selected value, and much more.

With the Ultimate Suite installed in your Excel, here are the steps to get it working:

  1. Select all the cells with formulas you wish to replace with calculated values.
  2. Go to the Ablebits Tools tab > Utilities group.
  3. Click Convert Formulas > To Value.

Replacing formulas with their values

Done!
all the formulas are converted to calculated values.

I do encourage you to explore other features of our Ultimate Suite. I can assure you that it will save 4-5 minutes on one Excel task, 5-10 minutes on another task, and by the end of the day it will save you an hour or more. How much does an hour of your work cost? :)

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