How to Find Formula Cells with ISFORMULA in Excel

Audit a template with ISFORMULA: find totals that were typed over instead of calculated.

You will learn to

• Test whether a cell contains a formula
• Flag hard-coded cells
• Tell typed-but-correct values from typed-and-wrong ones

How it works

ISFORMULA(reference) returns TRUE when the referenced cell contains a formula and FALSE when it holds a typed value or is empty. It checks how a cell was filled, not what it shows, so a typed 39,700 and =B2+C2 can look identical while only one of them updates when the inputs change.

That makes ISFORMULA the go-to audit tool for templates and budgets. Combine it with a recalculation check to separate typed values that are still correct from ones that are already wrong: =IF(ISFORMULA(D4),"Formula",IF(D4=B4+C4,"Typed but correct","Typed and wrong")).

=IF(ISFORMULA(D3),"OK","Hard-coded!")