Losing cell values in Excel

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Christopher Bartlett

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Dec 15, 2025, 9:08:43 AM (4 days ago) Dec 15
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NVDA 2025.3.2 and office 365 under win 11 25.h2.
When moving through an Excel sheet with formulas, I have recently begun encountering a problem where NVDA says "has formula" but does not give me the cell value. This may or may not be associated with the frequent repetition of "open copilot, control-comma" which I suppose could be flushing some sort of buffer or overriding the speech.
If anyone has had this problem and solved it, I'd love to know what's going on as it's making things more difficult to use Excel with.
Christopher Bartlett


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Christopher Bartlett

Mujtaba Merchant

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Dec 16, 2025, 9:55:03 AM (3 days ago) Dec 16
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Hi Christopher,

 

I apologize for the delay in getting back to you; it's been a hectic time, and I haven't had much time to breathe lately!

 

I appreciate you bringing up the issue of NVDA only reading "has formula" instead of the cell value. To help troubleshoot, I have attached an Excel file created in Excel 2024. I have used a formula in Column C (titled "Average").

 

Could you please verify for me whether NVDA is reading the calculated value or the formula text in Column C when you navigate the sheet?

 

While creating this verification file, I encountered a new, frustrating challenge: NVDA is not reading the column and row headers even though I explicitly set them using the NVDA commands i.e. NVDA + SHIFT C for columns and R for rows

 

Do you or anyone in the group know why NVDA might fail to read these manually set headers? It makes navigating large sheets extremely difficult.

 

attached is the workbook for you to validate the issue.

 

Sincerely,

 

Mujtaba Merchant

Bangalore | INDIA

Mail: mujt...@gmail.com

Website: The Somebody, Nobody, Anybody & Everybody Blog!

Sent from Outlook ® for Windows 10

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Average - Dummy.xlsx

Christopher Bartlett

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Dec 16, 2025, 2:46:04 PM (3 days ago) Dec 16
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I am able to read the cell values in this sheet.




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Christopher Bartlett

azhar...@gmail.com

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Dec 16, 2025, 4:01:12 PM (3 days ago) Dec 16
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Hi,

 

I raised this issue before that NVDA  + Shift  + R works for row headers, but  C does not work for columns. Different things were suggested but this issue was not resolved.

 

Regards,

 

Azhar

Mujtaba Merchant

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Dec 16, 2025, 10:43:06 PM (3 days ago) Dec 16
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Hi,

 

Thanks for chiming in, Azhar, regarding the persistent header issues!

I'm afraid I have similar, frustrating news to share regarding the manual header setting. I am running Office 2024 and NVDA version 2025.3 and unfortunately, neither the column headers () nor the row headers () are being read when navigating my test workbook.

 

This makes using complex Excel sheets extremely challenging, as the necessary context is entirely missing.

 

As a side note, it was actually very difficult to copy the NVDA version number to include in this email. I tried using the "copy last spoken text" command (), OCR, and selecting all and copying within the NVDA dialog, but none of these methods worked reliably to grab the version text. This is a small accessibility hurdle that might be worth raising separately.

Mujtaba Merchant

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Dec 16, 2025, 10:48:04 PM (3 days ago) Dec 16
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Hi Christopher,

 

Thank you very much for taking the time to validate the workbook I sent!

 

I'm glad to hear that the cell values containing formulas are read correctly for you in that test sheet. This is a very useful finding!

 

Regarding Your Original Issue

 

Since my test workbook works correctly for you, the issue you're experiencing where NVDA only says "has formula" but not the value is very likely an Excel setting that needs to be toggled on your machine.

 

The most common cause is the Excel "Show Formulas" feature being active. If you haven't already, please check this:

 

Solution: Go to the Formulas tab on the Excel ribbon, and in the Formula Auditing group, ensure the Show Formulas button is not selected.

 

I will spend some more time investigating other possible Excel settings or NVDA configurations that might cause this behavior, but the Show Formulas setting is the strongest candidate for now.

 

Thanks again for the help with the validation!

Christopher Bartlett

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Dec 17, 2025, 7:57:18 AM (2 days ago) Dec 17
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Thank you for the suggestion, I'll see what happens and report back.



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Christopher Bartlett

Sarah Alawami

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Dec 17, 2025, 12:48:32 PM (2 days ago) Dec 17
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Can you not use defined ranges? I keep forgetting the  keystroke even though I use it every day. I believe it is control f3, however do not quote me on that. I have documentation somewhere. I'd have to find it, and I'm at work right now.

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