You are trying to convert a string that looks like a formula (contained in cell B2) and have the result of the formula be calculated in cell B3, right?
Two ideas:
Idea 1: If you format B2 as text then enter the text =5*2*3 then change the cell format to Automatic, it will do the calculation in cell B2. You can convert it back to text to see the formula again.
Idea 2: Use an Applescript. The Applescript would copy the string from B2, put the "=" at the beginning and put it into B3. B3 will calculate the result. You can design the script to do this for multiple sets of cells. An example is below for you to try out. If you like it we can make it so it can be started with a keyboard command. Not quite sure how we'll stop it with a keyboard command, though
- Open the Applescript Editor application
- Copy the entire script from below
- Paste it into Applescript Editor
- Open a new Numbers document
- Put a formula into cell B2
- Run the script
- When you are done testing it out, stop the script. Otherwise it will run forever.
tell application "Numbers" to tell document 1 to tell sheet 1 to tell table 1
set vold to ""
repeat
set vnew to ("=" & value of cell "B2")
if vold ≠ vnew then
set value of cell "b3" to vnew
set vold to vnew
end if
end repeat
end tell