I have a rather large spreadsheet of many worksheets - all with many columns. (Surprisingly, the size is only about 800K.) Sometimes, I type new text in a cell with lots of existing text (including new lines started by alt-return); yet, often, the cell will drop the added text once I click some other cell. And, sometimes I can fool it, and it will take the added text. Is there a limit to cell capacity?
Also, I just tried adding a new column with formula =IF((M3-N3),0,1) and yet it returns the wrong answer. SO, I tried simply =(M3-N3) and the math is in error. Is my spreadsheet too big?
If you have lots of text in a cell, and you try to add more, but don’t see it, you may be running into one or more of Excel’s hard limits. There is a limit on row height (409 pixels? Don’t remember exactly). It’s unbreakable. There’s a limit on the number of characters that a cell can contain, too, but in the latest version it’s really high (32,000 characters? Again, can’t remember exactly). To test this, copy the contents of one of the cells where you’re having this issue. Paste into Notepad, or Word, or some text handler. If you ran into the row height issue, you’ll see all the text. It’s there in Excel, but it can’t be displayed. You can reduce the font size, or widen the column, but the row height limit is a hard limit.
As to your formula, I can’t say anything about it without knowing the context (i.e., contents of your spreadsheet). It’s *very *unlikely that Excel is producing math errors.
I would agree, but the math is too simple to get the formula wrong. It may be because the spreadsheet came from someone else and some formatting is foreign to me. For example, it knows to turn certain cells pink no matter what I try to override (other than cut and pasting a blank cell from another column without this issue). Also, while some cells are formatted for money, it is not the standard formatting. Not sure how someone customized this. It may be screwing up the math using said columns? I know, you wouldn’t think so…
=IF((M3-N3),0,1) seems weird. The (M3-N3) is the logical test part of the IF function - excel evaluates the result of the subtraction as true or false. It turns out that zero is false, anything else is true.
what are you trying to achieve?
And for entering into cells… finish by hitting the enter button. Clicking another cell may work, but if you are in “pointing” mode excel thinks you are trying to enter a cell address
Sounds like there’s conditional formatting applied to those certain cells, meaning that if the value in the cell meets certain criteria, the cell is formatted a particular way (in this case, having a pink fill). You can clear that from the whole spreadsheet if you want.
Select the cells in question. In the Home tab, click the Conditional Formatting command. Select Clear Rules from the dropdown. Choose Selected Cells, Entire Sheet, or whatever is applicable to your situation.
As to some cells being “formatted for money,” currency formatting is an option for cell formatting. Someone may have applied custom (non-standard) formatting. Again, you can clear all formatting from a cell, or the whole sheet. Or you can select the cells you want to change, format those cells to be currency or numbers, with or without comma separators for thousands, with however many decimal places you want, with negative numbers displayed however you like, etc.
I have a (large) spreadsheet that keeps applying euro (€) formatting when numbers are pasted; I have removed that formatting many, many times but it keeps coming back. I assume the spreadsheet is slightly corrupted, so I just live with it.
Might have something to do with what you’re copying from – is it possible that it’s not really number formatting, but the Euro symbol is just a character that you’re copying and pasting? Also, there are Windows (not Excel) settings that affect US/EU formatting of a bunch of stuff.
Try copying, pasting into something like Notepad first, see what you get.