microsoft excel
Suppose I have this formatted text in cell A7 of worksheet myworksheet:
My bold and italic text.
I can get this text to show up in a text box in a chart by setting the formula for the text box to this:
=myworksheet!A7 (Excel changes it to =myworksheet!$O$7)
That will get the text, but it won't keep the bold and italic formatting.
Is there a way to preserve the bold and italics in this scenario?
Using only formulas and no custom add-ons nor VBA: you can't. At least not with Excel up to 2007 (and quite probably all later versions as well)
First of all, there is no built-in formula that catches any form of formating.
Second, formulas only display their values. They don't influence formatting unless you use Conditional Formatting. But even if you do, there is no easy option to "copy formatting from the other cell". Besides, conditional formatting is limited in what it can format compared with "manual mouse clicking".
Yes you can use conditional formatting
FOLLOWUP (From Comments)
For multiple cells, select the relevant range and simply remove the "$" sign before the row number to make the range relative. See Screenshot below
Best Answer
Formulas only reference the value of a cell, not the format data.
Unfortunately, there is no way for a formula to reference the formatting of a specific cell, you will have to apply that formatting to the cell, or copy and paste special (all using source theme) instead of referencing.