Too many different cell formats Error

[Jen Severado]

Hi everyone,
I am creating a dashboard. However I continue to get the "Too many different formats" pop up error when I try to do anything like add a cell border or fill color. Excel will let me user paint brush to copy and paste an existing cell format but if I need to tweak it to add/remove a border for example, it doesnt like it and throws an error. I read online that the limit for custom cell formats is 4000. there is no way I can have that many different formats already. Does anyone know how to get around this. I keep searching for where excel is storing all these custom cell formats so I can clear some of them out (like the data manager tool) but I havent found it.
Just FYI, I used one of the Chandoo's dashboard templates as a starting point and then added my data and started customizing the look based on what I needed.
please help!
thank you,
Jen

 

[Luke M]

Not sure about others, but might first check the custom number formats. Pull up the cell format dialouge, go to Number, and Custom. Scroll all the way down.

At the bottom are all the ones that have been added. You can select the unwanted ones and delete them.