Microsoft Office

Making Your Worksheets
Error-Free
It goes without saying that you want your Excel worksheets to produce accurate
results. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to be certain that the results
are correct — especially if you deal with large, complex worksheets. This
chapter introduces the tools and techniques available to help identify, correct,
and prevent errors.
Finding and Correcting Formula
Errors
Making a change in a worksheet — even a relatively minor change — may produce
a ripple effect that introduces errors in other cells. For example, accidentally
entering a value into a cell that previously held a formula is all too easy to
do. This simple error can have a major impact on other formulas, and you may
not discover the problem until long after you make the change — or you may
never discover the problem.
IN THIS CHAPTER
How to identify and correct
common formula errors
Using Excel’s auditing tools
Using formula AutoCorrect
Tracing cell relationships
Checking spelling and related
features
Formula errors tend to fall into one of the following general categories:
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Syntax errors: You have a problem with the syntax of a formula. For
example, a formula may have mismatched parentheses, or a function
may not have the correct number of arguments.
Logical errors: A formula doesn’t return an error, but itcontains
a logical flaw that causes it to return an incorrectresult.
Incorrect reference errors: The logic of the formula is correct, but the
formula uses an incorrect cell reference. As a simple example, the range
reference in a Sum formula may not include all the data that you want
to sum.
Semantic errors: An example is a function name that is spelled incorrectly.
Excel will attempt to interpret it as a name and will display the
#NAME? error.
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