# copy formula not working [closed]

In Calc 5.3.2.2 (Xubuntu 16.04), I have a spreadsheet containing two sheets. One of the sheets contains a row of cells containing a formula with absolute references that displays the totals for a given month extracted from the other sheet.

The formula to get the totals for March (ie. month = 3) is: {=SUM(IF(MONTH(2017_Itemised.H3:2017_Itemised.H1048576)=3,2017_Itemised.I3:2017_Itemised.I1048576,0))}

I realised that the total for April was displaying 0.0 despite valid values for April being in the '2017_Itemised' sheet.

I tried copying and pasting the formula from the formula bar for 'March' into 'April', but in selecting the formula bar the brace characters { and } disappear, so the resulting formula is: =SUM(IF(MONTH(2017_Itemised.H3:2017_Itemised.H1048576)=4,2017_Itemised.I3:2017_Itemised.I1048576,0))

I then tried manually editing the formula in the formula bar to insert the braces, but the cell then just displays the formula string as text without calculating anything.

I have no idea what is going on here. The formula works for every other cell except this one, but as far as I can see the cells are identically configured in every way. Is there some special way to copy such a formula to another cell to make it work?

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### Closed for the following reason the question is answered, right answer was accepted by Alex Kemp close date 2020-08-11 13:09:08.699752

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Answering my own question: I got the formula to work by using 'Function Wizard' to insert the formula and ticking the 'Array' checkbox.

Eventually I realised that, after copying and pasting the array formula, I should have pressed 'Ctrl+Shift+Enter' instead of just 'Enter'. Talk about obscure input requirements. I don't see why 'Enter' wouldn't be sufficient.

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