Title: Excel showing error message when typing "- do -"?
Tags: microsoft-excel;worksheet-function
Question: Why Microsoft Excel Show an Error Message when typing "--do--"? It  show an message "Your Formulae is incomplete".


Here is the accepted answer: Start your text with a single quote ' if you want to enter what Excel might think is a formula, because it contains numbers or is a mathematical expression.

The message box does say "If you are not trying to enter a formula, avoid using an equal sign, a minus sign, or precede it with a single quotation mark"


Here is another answer: When you hit the first "-" it thinks you want to do a subtraction operation and tries to put a formula in the cell.  If you first format the cell as text and then type that in you'll be fine.


{'source': 'StackExchangeDataset', 'subset': 'superuser.com', 'metadata': {'AnswerCount': 2, 'CommentCount': 0, 'ContentLicense': 'CC BY-SA 3.0', 'CreationDate': '2009:00:09/09/09', 'FavoriteCount': None, 'PostTypeId': 1, 'Tags': '<microsoft-excel><worksheet-function>', 'Title': 'Excel showing error message when typing "- do -"?', 'ViewCount': 732, 'id': 38358, 'user_AboutMe': '<p>Learning new curve everyday..</p>\n', 'user_AccountId': 39037.0, 'user_DisplayName': 'Shashi', 'user_Reputation': 103.0, 'user_Views': 4.0, 'user_id': 29991.0}}