what is the little black triangle in the upper left corner of a cell

  • Thread starter Thread starter FireBrick
  • Start date Start date
F

FireBrick

After installing Excel and creating a spreadsheet. I find little black
triangles in the upper left corner of some cells.
The equations are working correctly and I can't seem to ask the correct
question in the help module to find out what they mean and to eliminate
them.

Please and thank you!

--
 
Click in one of the cells with such a triangle (they're green on my monitor)
and I think you'll see a yellow diamond shaped icon with an exclamation mark
in it appear next to the cell. Hover over that icon and it will give a
description of what it thinks the 'problem' may be. Often it is 'cell
contains formula - not locked to prevent accidental change' (or words to that
effect). May be some other similar warning.

If you click on the pull down arrow on that icon you'll have some choices
made available, including ignoring the error. You can go to Tools | Options
and choose the [Error Checking] tab to see the list of errors that are
checked for and choose how they are handled. Make decisions about those
choices wisely, not just for your overall convenience.
 
Thank you, that fixed it...I unchecked error checking for 'inconsistent
formulas'
and that made them disappear. (Some fields in a column do not have formulas
exactly alike)


JLatham said:
Click in one of the cells with such a triangle (they're green on my
monitor)
and I think you'll see a yellow diamond shaped icon with an exclamation
mark
in it appear next to the cell. Hover over that icon and it will give a
description of what it thinks the 'problem' may be. Often it is 'cell
contains formula - not locked to prevent accidental change' (or words to
that
effect). May be some other similar warning.

If you click on the pull down arrow on that icon you'll have some choices
made available, including ignoring the error. You can go to Tools |
Options
and choose the [Error Checking] tab to see the list of errors that are
checked for and choose how they are handled. Make decisions about those
choices wisely, not just for your overall convenience.



FireBrick said:
After installing Excel and creating a spreadsheet. I find little black
triangles in the upper left corner of some cells.
The equations are working correctly and I can't seem to ask the correct
question in the help module to find out what they mean and to eliminate
them.

Please and thank you!

--


-----------------------------------------------------
Ohio State Motto: At Least We're Not Michigan
-----------------------------------------------------

Bill H. in Chicagoland
webcams at http://24.14.49.4:8080
weather at http://hhweather.webhop.org
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Glad that helped - like I said, most of those alerts are just warnings that
you might have done something you really didn't mean to or want to and
perhaps should look at to double-check.

FireBrick said:
Thank you, that fixed it...I unchecked error checking for 'inconsistent
formulas'
and that made them disappear. (Some fields in a column do not have formulas
exactly alike)


JLatham said:
Click in one of the cells with such a triangle (they're green on my
monitor)
and I think you'll see a yellow diamond shaped icon with an exclamation
mark
in it appear next to the cell. Hover over that icon and it will give a
description of what it thinks the 'problem' may be. Often it is 'cell
contains formula - not locked to prevent accidental change' (or words to
that
effect). May be some other similar warning.

If you click on the pull down arrow on that icon you'll have some choices
made available, including ignoring the error. You can go to Tools |
Options
and choose the [Error Checking] tab to see the list of errors that are
checked for and choose how they are handled. Make decisions about those
choices wisely, not just for your overall convenience.



FireBrick said:
After installing Excel and creating a spreadsheet. I find little black
triangles in the upper left corner of some cells.
The equations are working correctly and I can't seem to ask the correct
question in the help module to find out what they mean and to eliminate
them.

Please and thank you!

--


-----------------------------------------------------
Ohio State Motto: At Least We're Not Michigan
-----------------------------------------------------

Bill H. in Chicagoland
webcams at http://24.14.49.4:8080
weather at http://hhweather.webhop.org
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Those are error-checking indicators.

Does not necessarily mean you have errors, just inconsistencies that Excel
flags.

See the options at Tools>Options>Error-checking.

You can turn it off or just let it flag specific "errors".


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP
 
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