Help w/ spreadsheet

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joe Field
  • Start date Start date
J

Joe Field

I am new to Excel (from Lotus), and need to create a
spread sheet with formulas. Some cells are not responding
with correct calculation. When I replace a veriable with
a new value, the response is #NAME. In other words, It
will not play "what if".

Is there someone to who I can email the file who can
troubleshoot the problem? I am signed up for an Excel
course, but not till end of July. Thanks. Joe Field
 
Joe Field said:
I am new to Excel (from Lotus), and need to create a
spread sheet with formulas. Some cells are not responding
with correct calculation. When I replace a veriable with
a new value, the response is #NAME. In other words, It
will not play "what if".

Is there someone to who I can email the file who can
troubleshoot the problem? I am signed up for an Excel
course, but not till end of July. Thanks. Joe Field
Click to expand...

Did you try typing #NAME into Excel help? If you had, you would have
discovered what it means:
"The #NAME? error value occurs when Microsoft Excel doesn't recognize text
in a formula."
It also gives some possible reasons for this, with examples, so is a good
way of learning.

What you have called a 'variable' is probably a named range. You can define
a name for a range of cells so that, for example, instead of
=SUM(A1:A10)
you can use
=SUM(Sales)
where "Sales" is the name given to the range A1:A10.

However, if you substitute "Purchases" for "Sales" in this formula without
having defined what range is meant by "Purchases", excel doesn't know what
you want and returns the #NAME error value.

Does this help?
 
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