My formula just shows the formula text, not the answer
The formula is right there in the cell, exactly as you typed it — starting with the equals sign — instead of the number or text it should calculate. Excel is treating it as literal text, not as something to evaluate.
First, check if it's every cell or just one
If every formula on the sheet is showing its text instead of its result, this is almost certainly the Show Formulas view toggle, not a per-cell formatting issue. Press Ctrl+` (the grave accent key, usually above Tab) to switch it off; you can also find it at Formulas → Show Formulas. It's a display setting for the whole sheet, and it's easy to hit by accident since it shares a key with the tilde.
If it's only one or a few specific cells
That's the Text-formatting problem. If a cell's number format was set to Text before you typed the formula into it, Excel stores exactly what you typed as a literal string — the equals sign included — and never evaluates it as a formula at all. You'll see the formula left-aligned, exactly as typed, with no calculated result ever appearing.
Why reformatting the cell alone doesn't fix it
Changing the cell's format from Text back to General or Number only affects how future entries are treated — it does not retroactively re-evaluate content that's already sitting in the cell as text. You have to force Excel to re-read the content: select the cell, press F2 to enter edit mode, then press Enter without changing anything, and Excel will re-parse it as a formula now that the format allows it. For many cells at once, select them, reformat to General, then use Data → Text to Columns → Finish (with no delimiters changed) as a quick way to force re-parsing across the whole selection.
Checking which case you're in
Upload your file below to see every formula's actual cell content and its live recomputed value side by side — a cell stuck as literal text will show no evaluated result at all, distinct from a cell just displaying its formula text under Show Formulas.