Forum Discussion
How to delete a circular reference?
I keep getting the error: "Careful, we found one or more circular references in your workbook that might cause your formulas to calcuate incorrectly," but I don't have any formulas in my spreadsheet yet. It's just numbers inputted in different columns that will eventually be summed up. I did copy and paste table headers to a new spreadsheet, but the headers don't have a formula. I click ok and then delete the "0.00" in that one column, but everytime I add columns, I get the same error. Very frustrating!
Claudia, sorry, i didn't catch this.
- if you have the reference, doesn't matter circular or not, you definetelly have formulas in your worksheet. Reference itself is the formula;
- you could add formulas eventually, not typing them manually, e.g. by clicking Totals within the icon which appears if you select at least couple of cells;
- blue circular reference line (after you click OK on alerting message) shows you two cells with circular reference, one of them is shall be with formula. Stay on cells and check formula bar what it shows.
- same formula shall be in all other cells of the same column - select the column and remove all
Above is just the direction where to find
I know where it's coming from because it does indicate the circular reference cell at the bottom but even when I delete the so-called formula, I still get the error message as soon as I insert another row. I just wrote down the entries in that column, highlighted the whole column and clicked on clear contents from the menu when I right click. That did the trick, and now I just have to re-input the values that were deleted. Luckily there aren't many.
Correct, Excel autofills with the same formula next rows, that's default behaviour.
Not necessary to cut and enter again - select the column, Copy and after that Past as values on the same place
