In an old excel '07 file If I refresh the cells, I get the answer as zero. I have changed nuthing in the file?

Question

It is a financial model in Excel 2007 which I had prepared some days back. Now some cells are giving the problem I mentioned so i cannot make any changes in the file. Pls help any 1 who has faced a similar problem

Answer 1

You have a formula that is amiss somewhere.

If you click:

Tools > Options

Then click the Calculation tab. You'll probably notice that Calculation is set to Manual instead of Automatic. I prefer to have mine set to Automatic as long as it doesn't take Excel forever to do the calculations.

When you have Calculation set to manual mode. Excel won't refresh the calculations unless you hit F9 or save the file. So you could have a bunch of errors and not notice them until you refresh. By setting it to auto mode you detect the errors immediately and can address the problem much more easily.

Somewhere you probably have a formula wrong. You might want to use the Formula Auditing tool in Excel to help identify the problem. Go to:

Tools > Formula Auditing

It should help make the problem formulas easier to identify.

Basically, you had the problems before you ever hit Refresh. It's just the problems didn't become visible until you hit refresh.