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"Excel found a problem with one or more formula references" - Please tell me where!

One of my least favorite messages that Excel provides is:

"Excel found a problem with one or more formula references in this worksheet. Check that the cell references, range names, defined names, and links to other workbooks in your formulas are all correct."

But I can never find the bad references. It's usually buried somewhere very deep, in a chart series formula, or in a name definition, or who knows where else.

If Excel finds a problem, please Excel, tell us where it is.

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Jon Peltier shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

27 comments

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  • Roy commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I always wondered if you were to have a closed spreadsheet that had a bad formula in it which the one you were opening referred to sometimes triggered this. You know, just 'cause an extra layer of h*ll to worry about made it grimmer I guess.

    Actually, still wonder if that can do it.

    If they can spot a bad link or formula, and give an error message concerning it, they can tell us what sourced it. Given their "let the program ***** up even the simplest thing it insists upon doing 'for you' whether you like it or not" successes, I cannot accept that it could get unspecified errors and realize they must be this and so can't, as I posit, tell us what caused them.

    Can't get "Let me open that CSV file for you" right means it absolutely is NOT doing the above. So it should be easy to let it tell us what and where.

  • Nice Brian commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I used to get this a lot. For me it was always in conditional formatting, someone's copied cells from another workbook that were conditionally formatted with a formula, and that formula linked to the workbook they copied the cells from.

    Now I just don't ever use conditional formatting, and do all my colouring-in using VBA macros. Voila, the problem slowly but surely went away.

    I agree though, I spent days if not weeks tracking down these "broken links" which Excel wanted to warn me about EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I opened one of the affected workbooks, but kept their actual location a secret!

  • Anders Ebro (TheSmileyCoder) commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    It seems clear to me, that the only focus for MS now is the cloud versions of excel. Several desktop related issues are not being adressed. VBE has received no love for 15 years, and they don't want to invest in that either, despite millions of users depending on it every day.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Agreed. Amazes me how they manage to make the look and feel of Excel worse with each new release, change for the sake of it, yet don't fix problems that real users in the real world want fixing, problems they've known about for many many years.

  • Mitch commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    GLOBAL F9 for the Masses

    Well, if you're going to fix this, go all in and give us "Stack Trace", so we can follow the logic Excel uses to arrive at the problem or, in general, the solution.

  • Johnson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    "Hi! There's supposedly a problem, but I can't be bothered to tell you what it is. Instead I'm just going to beep at you and give you a pop-up to close - every time you do anything, from now until the end of time."

    Gee, I can't imagine how anyone could find that annoying. XD

  • Enerkey Roger commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I am using windows 10. I also works on excel for my job.somedays ago I faced with this error the I saw this sitehttps://msofficetechnicalsupportnumbers.com/blog/how-to-fix-ms-excel-has-stopped-working-error/
    and get a solution. You have to check something such as isolate the specific spreadsheet tab, check external links, check the name manager, check your charts, check your pivot tables. After you can solve the problem

  • tim commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    agree. need to know what range or object. must include named ranges, and conditional formats as well.

    ps, Excel users have found a problem with Excel - please fix it

  • jim commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    a bit like the point of this thread; you've identified a similar thread but failed to tell us where - I like the irony

  • jim commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    and links!
    when I'm told my document has links to other files, please tell me where and what (cell formulae, charts, named ranges, pivot sources,... ...any others?)

    jim

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