Hi
There is plenty of information about the error checking functions of
Excel in the built-in Help, but you can't find it by searching for the
term "little green triangles". Search on "error" instead to find
several useful pages on error messages and checking.
The green triangles when displayed without an Excel error message (such
as #ERR, #NUM, #NAME) show that Excel has detected some kind of
inconsistency in the formula yet is able to compute a result. For
example, one reference in your formula might be pointing to an empty
cell. This does not necessarily mean the formula contains an error. If
you copy a formula from one cell to several neighbouring cells and then
change the formula manually in just one cell, Excell will detect the
inconsistency of that cell with its neighbours and display the green
triangle as a warning that something might be wrong and that you are
advised to check it.
They are also displayed in connection with cells containing error
messages, of which a full list can be found in Help. In this case, your
formula most probably contains an error or the input data in the
referred cells is the wrong type for the formula. For example, if the
result of a formula contains the square root of a negative number, you
will get a #NUM result. If you have mistyped the name of a function
name or a named cell you will get #NAME.
Green triangles are displayed only when you have enabled
Tools>>Options>>Error Checking>>Enable background error checking.
If it's just the green you don't like, you can follow the above menu
sequence to find an option for changing the colour. You can also set
various error checking options. Click on the qeustion mark in the top
right corner of the dialogue box and then on a menu option in order to
find out more about what it does.
The green triangles don't print and they don't copy over to other
applications via the clipboard (copy-paste), so usually there is no
need to hide them. My advice is: don't try to hide them. I build large,
complex spreadsheets for modelling physical processes and I find the
built-in error checking very useful for indicating and tracing
problems. Click the cell with the green triangle and a picklist button
will appear beside it. Click on this and you can choose various options
to help reach a verdict on the inconsistency and locate the cause. One
such option is the step-through calculation, which shows the
intermediate results of each calculation step. If you mark any
individual cells as "ignore errors", which you might once you are
certain the formula is correct, you can un-ignore them again in the
Tool>>Options menu as described above.
Unfortunately I have so far only been able to get the step through menu
option to display when there is an error message. Sometimes I need to
step through long formulae in order to be able to check that they are
correct by looking at the results of each bracket or function in the
formula, even when they don't show an error indicator. Fortunately,
step-through is also possible for formulae that are not flagging errors
by going to Tools>>Formula Auditing>>Evaluate Formula.
I hope that helped for now and refer you to Excel Help for more
information.
best regards
Nick Cory
14656 Brieselang,
nr. Berlin, Germany
