Errors

Errors can get into our workbooks when we enter data, and we saw one way of addressing that when
we talked about Data Validation. But errors can also get into our calculations, and it's very important
that we find and correct those errors, otherwise our spreadsheets are not going to produce the right
outputs.

Common errors:

##### - Occurs when your data isn’t fitting in your cell.

Value error - #VALUE! error occurs when you've either made a typo in your calculation, or one of the
inputs is invalid. So, if we double click on the cell to actually have a look at that calculation, this has an
advantage in that it actually highlights the inputs.

Div0 error- Usually, you get a #DIV/0 when you try to divide by zero, and this often happens when one of
the input cells is blank or contains a zero.

N/A error- We've got an N/A error coming back and that means it's tried to do a look up, but it hasn't
found the look up value. Generally, that means we've typed the look up value in incorrectly, or we
haven't provided it at all.

Name Error- Name errors normally occur because you've either typed the function name in wrong, or
because you've forgotten your double quotes and you're working with text. Well sometimes, we get an
error in a cell because it's referring to another cell that in itself has an error in it. So sometimes, this can
be quite hard to find.

If you have small amount of errors, it is easy to spot. However, if your errors are too much, we need to
have some tools to find those errors and fortunately, Excel gives us a range of tools to help with this.
Come up to the 'Home' tab on the ribbon, and on the far right, we're going to click 'Find & Select' and
then choose 'Go To Special'. One of the options 'Go To Special' gives us, is to find formulas, and then we
can be more specific and say, only find formulas that have errors. So we're going to unselect everything
except the errors and we're going to click 'OK'. And immediately, you'll see all the cells that contain an
error have been selected. The problem is, the moment I click away, they will be unselected. So if you
want to retain the selection, just come up to a little paint bucket here, and we will highlight them as
yellow. And now you can see that all the errors are standing out, bright yellow on the worksheet, and
we can systematically work through them.

Another great tool we have, and I'm just going to click unselect, is when you come up to your 'Formulas'
tab, and in the center group, which is called 'Formula Auditing', we have a great selection of tools for
helping us find and correct calculation errors. And the one we're going to look at first is 'Error Checking'.
If we click 'Error Checking', what it's going to do is start from wherever we're clicked, and work
systematically through each error in our workbook, giving us the opportunity to correct them, so that's
really great.
One of the options we have is to click 'Show Calculation Steps', and so click on that. What this actually
does is it takes us into the calculation process for that formula. After identifying the error, select the
option 'Edit in Formula Bar', which will allow us to change the calculation.

To get back to our error checking, we simply click the 'Resume' button. And if we corrected the error, it
will automatically take us to the next one anyway.

Reference error- These errors occur either when you copy paste relative references to cells where they
cannot refer to the correct values, or they happen quite often with lookup errors. When you refer to a
range that doesn't actually exist. Now once again, let's click 'Edit in Formula Bar' and find error in
formula bar.

One of the advantages of error checking. It will actually let you look at potential errors. So these are
things that Excel has flagged as looking like it might be problematic, even though it hasn't yet produced
an error message. If you want to then jump to the next error, you can simply click next, and once you're
done, you can close the dialog.

Let's take a look at another tool. This one is really useful as an option to show formulas. Sometimes,
looking at a single formula on its own doesn't really help us. it would be helpful if I could see the
formula, but also see the other formulas that work correctly. So I'm going to come up to my 'Formula
Auditing' and click 'Show Formulas', and I can now see all the formulas in my workbook. After finding the
error and correcting it, click on ‘Show Formulas’ again and you will find that the error is now rectified.

Let’s see one more tool. For name errors, what we're going to use is the trace error function to locate
which cell has actually got an error in it. GO to ‘formula auditing’, click on the dropdown under the ‘error
checking’ option and select 'Trace Error', and you'll see it's actually traced back to find all the inputs in
for this calculation. And where you see the red arrow, that is telling you which cell is producing the
error. To turn the arrows back off again, just click 'Remove Arrows'.

Formula Calculation Options

When you first open the workbook containing errors, a message pops up complaining about circular
references. If we just click OK, the problem appears to go away, but it doesn't, actually, and circular
references are a very serious issue in workbooks.

A circular reference is when the calculation cell includes itself as part of that calculation, and as a result,
gets into an infinite loop. They can also occur when a cell indirectly references itself, so it refers to
another cell which refers to it. Now the problem is, now that I've pressed OK, how do I find out where
that circular reference is? We will use the error checking tool on the Formulas tab. Click on Formula tab
and under Error Checking, click on drop down. At the bottom you will see Circular References. Now this
will be grayed out if there aren't any in your workbook. But if our worksheet contains circular error, we
will see something like this in the picture

And when I click on this, it will take me directly to the cell. Find it and correct it. That's one slightly subtle
error.

The other one we're going to look at, are the green triangles. This sometimes crop up in your workbook,
they may indicate nothing at all, but they are Excel's way of telling you that something about that
calculation, while not necessarily an error, looks like it might be incorrect in some way. The most
common reason is an inconsistent formula. That is when you have a lot of formulas that all look the
same, and then one that looks a little bit different.
Excel also gives us some options for fixing that. So again, if we come to our little drop down, if it was not
an error, we could just choose Ignore Error. And the green triangle would go away. If however it is an
error, if it's an inconsistent formula, you can just click Copy Formula from Above and problem fixed.
Kindly refer to above figure.

When you're getting a lot of green triangles and there aren't errors to go and manually ignore all of
them would be a bit of a pain. So you have another option, and that is to change your error checking
options. So click here and then at the bottom you will see Enable Background Error Checking.

Keep “Enable background error checking” ticked. That is what allows Excel to go and do this kind of
checking for you. You can also chose what color you want your triangles to be, so they don't have to be
green. But more importantly here are all the different options that Excel is going to check for. And for
example, here we have Inconsistent calculated column.

Now, one that may crop up which you don't like is the unlocked cells containing formulas. This is when
you're using error protection. You may wish to flag any cells that are unlocked that you'd actually like to
be locked because they contain a calculation. So just before we come out of this at the top you will
notice another option which is Workbook Calculation. Now by default this is set to automatic and what
that means is every time you make a change in your workbook all the calculations recalculate. Usually
you want this on. However, if you have a massive workbook and it's being very unresponsive, so every
time you make a small change you have to wait a couple of minutes for it to do all the calculations again.
You can instead set your workbook to manual. On setting manual, you will notice that, on changing a
value, of course the changed data is only changed to value that I've selected, but you'll see the rest of
the values have not updated. To fix this, if we come back to our Formulas tab, and come to our
Calculation group, you'll see there's an option to Calculate Now. And when I click that, it forces Excel to
immediately recalculate all the values in your workbook.

But it means I can choose when I want to calculate, rather than it having to recalculate every time. So
that is how the manual calculation works. You'll have to press Calculate Now when you actually want to
see the calculation change. Now to set it back to automatic, come to your Calculation options, click
Automatic. And now if we go and change something, you can see it re-calculates automatically. So when
I change this back to Connor you will see it immediately updates as we would expect it to.

Trace Precedents and Dependents

One good way of auditing a workbook is to create cross-check totals. In other words, to try and get to
your totals using different methods and then to make sure that those totals still agree. If they don’t
happen, then there is an error. When you're trying to locate more subtle errors like this, we have two
great tools to help us and they're called Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents. A precedent is a cell
that is referred to in a formula. A dependent is the opposite - it is a formula that refers to your cell.

Trace precedents: So what we're going to do is come down to the potential error cell, and we're going
to find out which cells are being referred to by this formula. So we're going to click Trace Precedents. If
the Cell referred seem fine, we can still keep going back so we can find out which cells these refer to. So
we're going to click Trace Precedents again. And there, you can see the problem.
Now before we fix the error, we'd like to remove the arrows so we're going to come back up to Formula
Auditing and click Remove Arrows.

Trace Dependents: Suppose we have a green triangle error in a cell, but we'd like to double-check, does
the cell in any way impact this total. So let's click on it, and this time we're going to Trace Dependents.
So I'm going to come back up to Formula Auditing and click Trace Dependents. If you can’t still connect
how the errored cell is dependent on the value that we are trying to rectify, then click on ‘Trace
Dependents’ once again. You will find the link.

So, let's once again remove our arrows and go and fix the problem. This time we have a little green
triangle, but we'd like to first identify where it is, so let's Trace Precedents.
If you find a dashed symbol, that indicates that we're referring to a value in a different worksheet. If you
double-click on the black arrow, it will not only tell you which worksheet or worksheets, but it will give
you an exact cell reference and you can actually go to that cell reference something like in the below
figure. Correct the error.

Evaluate Formula, Watch Window

Now generally the best way to avoid errors in your formulas is to check errors at the time of creation.
Because we've seen that it's quite hard to go and find them and correct them after the fact, but
unfortunately, we can't always rely on people to do that. So it may be that we have to look at errors
afterwards. Suppose there is a formula for a filtered cell option but wasn’t checked for every alternative
option, then we need to rectify it. In a small calculation, finding problem is easy but not for large ones.
Excel gives us another great tool to help us actually work through the formula step by step and identify
where it's going wrong. To use it, I'm going to press Escape, so I'm just selected on the cell with the
formula, but not actually viewing the formula. And I'm going to come up to my Formulas tab, and in my
formula auditing group I'm going to click Evaluate Formula. And this dialog will allow us to work through
the formula step by step and see what Excel is actually doing and where it's going wrong.

Another little handy tool that's available to us for doing formula auditing is the Watch Window. The
Watch Window can be found on the Formulas tab, so come up here. And it allows us to watch a cell
even when we're not on the same worksheet as the one that contains the cell. It depicts the impact of
one cell that can occur in different sheet. Select the cell whose impact you want to see, and then in
formulas, click watch window option and click on ‘Add Watch’. If you change the value of the watched
cell, you will monitor it through the watch window.
Protecting Workbooks

To avoid further errors creeping in or formulas being accidentally changed, we would now like to add
some protection to this workbook which will lock down the cells that contain the formulas. Protection
can be added at three different levels. It can be added at the workbook level. In other words, you can
restrict access to the workbook itself. It can be added at the structural level so you can prevent people
from adding, moving, or unhiding worksheets. Or it can be added at the worksheet level itself, where
you can lock all the cells or just selected cells. Click on the File tab, which should take you to the Info tab
and you'll see a big button Protect Workbook. And this gives you quick access to quite a lot of the
options.

Encrypt with a Password which will allow you to add a password to prevent access to the workbook. It
only gives us one level of access though. So, what we're going to do instead is we're going to click the
Save As button. And if you're in 2013 for example, click the More options or the Browse button to bring
up the traditional Save As dialog. Now, once you're in this dialog, tucked away next to the Save button is
a little Tools option. And when you click on that, you'll see General Options. And this allows us to add
two levels of password protection. You can add a password without which the user will not be able to
open the workbook at all. Or if you're happy for them to open the workbook, but only to view the
contents, you can add a password to modify as well. And users without this password, although they will
be able to open the workbook, they will not be able to actually change the contents. Basically, it simply
means the file is open read-only.
For double layered password, do save as and then click on tools option to select General Options for two
layers of password protection.

There are other ways too. The other two options available to us can be accessed from the Review tab
which is where we would typically go. And you'll see a group called Protect and the first option we're
going to look at here is the Protect Workbook. This allows you to protect the structure of the workbook.
We're going to click on the button, and you'll see it offers us the option to put in a password. You don't
have to. But if you want to ensure that people can't remove this level of protection, make sure you put
in a nice strong password. Now, if you come down to the tabs, you will notice that the new sheet has
been grayed out. We cannot add a new sheet, and we cannot move the sheets. And when you right-click
on any of the tabs, you'll notice nearly all the options, including Hide and Unhide, have been grayed out.
So the structure of our workbook is locked. And this is a very good idea when you have, for example, 3D
cell references and you don't want the sheets being moved around, or if you have a sheet that you want
to remain hidden. This is one way to ensure it does.

Now, probably the most useful protection, however, is the Protect Sheet. What this does is actually lock
down the contents of the sheet.
The next thing we're going to look at is how you can unlock certain cells, that when you add protection,
those cells can still be modified. So, I'm going to come back to Unprotect Sheet, and I'm going to put in
my password and say OK. And now protection has been lifted. By default, all the cells in a worksheet are
locked, which means when you protect, they cannot be edited. But you can choose to unlock certain
cells.

Select the cells which you want to unlock and choose right-click and choose Format Cells. And there are
several ways you can get to this, but that's often the easiest. And if it doesn't automatically come to the
Protection tab, so it may have gone to the Number tab, simply click Protection. The Hidden option is by
default turned off. If you were to make cells hidden, what that means is when the user clicks on them,
they can't actually see the value behind the cell. So nothing will appear in the Formula bar. We're not
going to be looking at that now though. So, we're just going to say OK, and then once again, I'm going to
hit the Protect, but this time I'm not going to allow the users to Select Locked Cells, I'm going to untick
that. But I won't worry with the password. And we're just going to say OK. This time when I try and click
on any of the locked cells, it's not even allowing me to do that. So I can't see what formulas are behind
here. I can't even click in the cell. But if I come to one of the cells that are unlocked, different story, now
I can change them.
Finally, we're going to look at the Allow Edit Ranges. If we want only certain people are allowed to
change certain cells but they're not allowed to change the rest of the workbook. Now, to do this, what
I can do is come to Allow Edit Ranges and I can specify certain ranges to have their own password.
So, I'm going to click Allow Edit Ranges. Set password. Then I need to protect my sheet. But this
time, I will allow them to select locked cells so they can actually get to that projected increase. And
I'm going to say OK. Now, when I click on the seven percent, if I try and change it, it will let me, but I
only if I have the password.