5 Common Excel Problems and Fixes

Often you might have these little bugs that bother you in life but since I write about Excel, I’ll try to fix your bugs in that context 😀

Let’s take a look at 5 of the most common problems

#1 Formulas not working

It might have had happened that while confirming a formula (by pressing enter) the result doesn’t show up, instead the formula itself is displayed in the cell

The Fix – The problem is that the cell has a text format so excel thinks your formula is a piece of text. To fix this, simply convert the cell in a Number or General format and then confirm the formula once again. I am pretty sure it’ll work

 

#2 Formula View

This one happens mostly by accident when your spreadsheet is showing all formulas but not their results

This is not because of cell formatting but it is because you might have switched over to the formula view by pressing Ctrl ~ (tilde).

The Fix – Just press Ctrl ~ (tilde) again and you’ll come back in the normal mode

 

#3 Hashes (######) in a Cell

At times the cell will be filled up hashes.

This could be because

1. The cell value does not fit in the current cell width
2. The number or text is in excess of 253 characters
3. A negative number in the cell has been formatted as a Date or Time format. Note that date and time must be +ve numbers

 

The Fix – 

1. Widen the column width. Shortcut ALT OCA (auto-fit) or ALT OCW (for specifying custom width)
2. Cut short the cell value / number of characters
3. Make sure that a negative number in the cell is not formatted as date or time

 

#4 Page Breaks

Although these are harmless but they untidy my sheet

The Fix – Go to Excel Options --> Advanced --> Scroll down to Display Options for This Worksheet --> Un-check Page Breaks

 

#5 Page Break Or Layout View

This mostly happens when you receive a printable file from someone. The view might look a like Page Break (left) or Layout (right) and you are unsure how to get back to normal excel screen

The Fix – At the right bottom corner of your excel screen there are 3 buttons to toggle between 3 views (2 views from above and normal view)

 

Can you think of any more?

I could think of just 5 problems, but I am sure there are plenty of them. If you have any more please drop in a comment and I’ll try to give you a fix

 

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