Understanding Excel Error Messages

Anyone who has spent a lot of time using Excel will occasionally make and error when entering data or a formula. Thankfully, Excel is programmed to tell you that you made a mistake, and it will even give you an error message that will suggest what the problem is. These are the error messages that Excel will give you, and an explanation of what they mean:

• ###### = value is too long to display (make the column wider to fix this)
• #VALUE = the wrong type of argument or operand has been used
• #DIV/0! = a formula divides by 0 (zero)
• #NAME? = Excel doesn’t recognize text in a formula.
• #N/A = a value is not available to a function or a formula
• #REF! = a cell reference is not valid
• #NUM! = a problem has occurred with a number in a formula or function
• #NULL! = you specified an intersection of two areas that do not intersect

Remember these error messages next time you are troubleshooting an error in Excel – they will help you find and fix the problem.