Turn Off Circular Reference In Excel

How to shut off the circular reference warning in excel 2007 I have a couple of workbooks that make extensive use if the INDIRECT command. This seems to generate many circular reference warnings. How To Turn Off Circular Reference In Excel For Mac Gta 2 For Mac Download. If that doesn't help, check for firewall software on your PC and turn it off. If you mean the Error message that pop-up when a circular reference happens like on this screenshot: You may try checking the Enable iterative calculation via File Options then Formulas. Once the option is enabled, the error window will not be displayed every time a circular reference happens. The same result can be achieved by using the CONCATENATE function, and the following tutorial explains all the details: How to combine text strings, cells and columns in Excel. Reference operators in Excel formulas and functions. To supply rages to MS Excel formulas and separate arguments in Excel functions, the following operators are used. Typically if you have formulae of the order. Then you have a circular reference since A1 is dependent on A2 and A2 is dependent on A1. First turn off Iterative calculations in Excel Options.Formulas so that you see the circular cell at the bottom left of the Application next to 'Ready'.

Circular references and calculation settings

If you want to work with circular references, the calculation settings of Excel are very important. This page gives you some pointers!

Calculation settings

The first thing that needs to be done if you want to assure your model works, is to turn on iterative computation of the file.


Iteration settings in Excel 2010

Excel

It is up to you to decide how many iterations you want Excel to do before it stops, or what precision you need before Excel stops (whichever comes first). As soon as you check the box 'Enable Iterative calculation', Excel will do a calculation of your model. After saving the file, if you open the file again you should no longer get the circular reference warning message.

If you are troubleshooting your calculation, set Maximum Iterations to 1. This gives you the opportunity to step through the calculations one at the time by repeatedly hitting the F9 key.

Which calculation settings apply

I often get this question: I have checked the 'Enable Iterative calculation' box on my file. Why do I still get the circular reference warning? To be able to understand what causes this it is important to know how Excel handles its calculation settings.

Application wide settings

Calculation settings are application-wide. That is, if workbook A needs manual calculation and workbook B needs automatic calculation and you have both workbooks open, Excel's current setting will apply to both workbooks. The same goes for the iterative calculation settings: they apply to all workbooks in your Excel session.

When you save a workbook, whichever calculation setting was applied at that time is saved with the workbook.

First-come first-serve

Excel will apply the calculation settings of the first workbook you open in a session. So if you first open workbook A (which had iteration disabled when it was last saved) and then Workbook B (with iteration enabled when it was last saved), Excel will keep iteration disabled. This explains why you do get the circular reference warning on that workbook.

Warning: When you save your workbook, the calculation settings that are currently in effect are saved with the file. This means that if you have previously set up iterative calculation and the max iterations and max change, these settings may be overwritten with the current settings.

Making sure you have the calculation settings you need

There are several ways to ensure your workbook calculates as expected:

Always open as the first workbook

Well, that one is obvious enough. Of course if your model is used by other people as well, this is not exactly fool-proof. Your users would have to be made aware of this situation, but chances are very high your calculation settings will get overwritten at some point, making your model unreliable. And even if you're the sole user, this is a big risk.

Use a bit of VBA to control calculation settings

A more reliable way to control the calculation settings is by adjusting them when your workbook loads. This means you will have to add macro's to your file, but this is straightforward enough.

I assume the file with the circular references is already open.

Open its ThisWorkbook module by double-clicking on it in the project explorer as shown below:


The Project explorer in the VBA Editor

Turn Off Circular Reference Warning In Excel

Paste this code into the code window that opens up and modify the calculations settings so they match what you need.

OptionExplicit
PrivateSub Workbook_Open()
With Application
.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
.Iteration = True
.MaxIterations = 100
.MaxChange = 0.001
EndWith
EndSub

Now save your file (if you are using Excel 2007 or up, make sure you change the file-type to one that can hold macro's, otherwise the macro code is discarded after you close your file!)


While using the IF function, Vineet wants to retain the old value in the cell if the condition is false. In other words, the value in a cell where the IF function is used should change only if the condition being tested by the IF function is true. By default, however, the IF function makes the value 0 if the condition is False.

The IF function can take up to three parameters. The first parameter is the comparison that is to be made, the second parameter is what should be returned if the comparison is true, and the third is what should be returned if the comparison is false. It is possible to leave off the last parameter, but if you do then Excel will return the value 0 if the comparison is false. (This is what Vineet is seeing returned by his IF function usage.)

The obvious solution, then, is to make sure that you provide the IF function with something that should be returned when the comparison is false. For instance, let's say that your formula is in cell B1 and you are comparing something in cell A1. The formula you use may look like this:

Note that the words 'under ten' are returned if the value in A1 is less than 10. If this condition is not met, then the value in B1 is returned. Since this formula is in cell B1, this means that the previous value in the cell is returned if the condition is false.

It also means that the formula contains a circular reference. For circular references to work OK you need to let Excel know that it is OK for them to occur in your worksheet. Follow these steps if you are using Excel 2010 or a later version:

  1. Display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options. Excel displays the Excel Options dialog box.
  2. At the left side of the dialog box, choose Formulas. (See Figure 1.)
  3. Figure 1. The Formulas tab of the Excel Options dialog box.

  4. Make sure the Enable Iterative Calculation check box is selected.
  5. Click OK.

If you are using Excel 2007, choose Tools | Options | Calculation tab and make sure the Iteration check box is selected. Excel will now allow the circular reference without complaint.

Turn Off Circular Reference In Excel 365

If you don't want to allow a circular reference in your worksheet, then the only recourse is to create a macro that updates the value in cell B1 based upon any changes to cell A1:

Turn Off Circular References In Excel

This simple macro, when added to the ThisWorkbook module, is executed every time there is a change in the workbook. If the value is cell A1 is changed (and only that cell), then the value is checked to see if it is less than 10. If it is, then the value in cell B1 is changed. If it isn't, then the value in cell B1 is left alone.

How To Turn Off Circular Reference Error In Excel

There is one 'gotcha' that you need to keep in mind with any of the approaches discussed thus far, formula or macro. If the value in cell A1 is (let's say) 15, then cell B1 will contain what was there before, whatever it was. If you change the value in cell A1 to (let's say) 7, then B1 will change to 'under ten.' That's fine, but from that point on cell B1 will never appear to change. Why? Because if you then change cell A1 to a value greater than 10, cell B1 will contain (as just explained) what was there before. And, as you now understand, the value that was there before is the result of the previous true result, which was 'under ten.' Thus, true or false, the formula or macro from this point on displays the text 'under ten.'

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