How to make one cell equal another in Calc?

I am going crazy right now. I am trying to enter a value in one cell and have it show up in other cells elsewhere in the sheet. Should be a really simple task but I’m screwing something up somehow.

For example, I enter a value in A1. I want the same value to then show up in cells A2 and A3. I thought I should just put =A1 in those other cells - always used to work - but now those cells just say “=A1” rather than the value I entered into A1. Do I have a setting wrong somewhere?

Two possibilities I can see:

  1. You enabled ‘Formula’ under
    ‘Tools’>‘Options’>‘LibreOffice Calc’>‘View’>‘Display’
  2. All the cells you entered =A1 in are set to the fake ‘Numbers’ format ‘Text’ , code: @.

It was the second one. Thank you so much!