You open an Excel file and some cells show #### instead of the value. Here is a quick fix.
- Just make the columns wider
Still not working? Read on…
Even after making the columns wide-enough, sometimes Excel can show ### in cells. This can happen if you have dates in the cells and some of the are negative (or after 31 December year 9,999).
See below demo:
How to fix the problem for negative dates:
Excel cannot process negative dates or dates before year 1900. In most situations, a negative date could be just a formula or data entry error. So go ahead and apply the necessary data adjustments.
Can I show another message if the cell has error?
Sure. You can use IFERROR function in Excel to show an alternative result when the original values is error. To use this:
=IFERROR(your original value or formula, “alternative result”)
For example:
=IFERROR(AVERAGEIFS(A1:A10, B1:B10, “England”), “No result”)
The above formula tries to calculate the average of A1:A10 where B1:B10 is “England”. If there is an error, it will print “No result”.
Learn more about Excel errors:
See these pages to learn more about common errors with Excel.