I have typed in some text input by using Alt-7 to convert everything into text, but why is text still evaluated? Or is there better way to make comments other than (* text here *), because in my text there are numbers and it is also evaluating them too?
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1What do you mean by "why is text still evaluated?" Text cells don't evaluate. – jVincent Jan 07 '13 at 15:34
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2To Alt-7 into a text cell the cell bracket to the far right needs to be selected. – ssch Jan 07 '13 at 15:51
3 Answers
8
I suspect the reason for your problem is that the cell you are typing in is not a Text cell, but an Input cell. That means it has the Evaluatable property and will be evaluated. It also means that Alt-7 won't make the text into a comment. The only way I know to put a comment in an Input cell is with (* *).
You can check this by looking at the Format > Style menu. If the Input menu-item is has a check mark, then what you trying to do with Alt-7 won't work. If that's so, you have the option of changing the cell type to Text.
m_goldberg
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If you are running Mathematica 10 or above then select any cells you want to prevent from being evaluated, then select from the main menu:
Cell -> Cell Properties -> Evaluatable
to un-tick that property.
MarcoB
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Andrew Simper
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I suspect that you did select the cell content and used Alt-7. Then the cell is still an input cell but the content is formatted as text which you can check by using the menu entry Cell -> Show Expression. That will show something like this:
Cell[BoxData[
StyleBox[
RowBox[{"1", "+", "1"}], "Text"]], "Input"]
You should, as others have mentioned select the cell (by clicking on the cell bracket on the right) and then use Alt-7 to convert the cell to a text cell, which then won't be evaluatable with shift-return.
Albert Retey
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