Excel offers developers a feature which is cool to use and may have value in helping you develop your own numerical spreadsheet projects. Have you every been looking at a page full of formulas and functions and wished you could see the formula rather than the results of the formula?
The folks from Excel anticipated the need and offered an easy way to toggle back and forth between the two views of the same cell.
Let's take a look at a typical spreadsheet in the "normal" view and then at the same spreadsheet in the "formula/function" view.
This might be a typical spreadsheet showing the test average of each student as well as the averages for each of the three tests.
In order to view the same spreadsheets with the formulas and functions visible, you need to depress the Control Key and the "tilda" Key at the same time. And now you ask what is a tilda? Look on your keyboard above the Tab key for the key with the ~ sign...the tilda. (If you are a geometry student you might call it the "similar to" sign.)
If you press Control + ~ you will see the spreadsheet with the formulas and functions showing.
You might note the size of the columns is expanded. This is because you need more room to see all of the cell contents. Depressing the same two keys simultneously will revert to the "normal" view.