Little green triangle top left corner

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum, I know next to nothing about excel-please be gentle. I have a copy of someone elses spreadsheet, on one of the cells there is a little green triangle type icon in the top left corner. I know from reading up that this is supposed to be some sort of error in the cell-but as it is only a copy I cannot click on it to see what it means. It's important that I know what it means, if anyone can enlighten me please reply-with simple language if you can, like i say I am not familiar with excel, but I need to decipher what the icon means. The info in the spreadsheet is supposed to be accurate, so if the icon means it has been tampered with and changed I need to know-is this what that icon means?

Thank you,

Rach

Originally Posted by rachie2017

on one of the cells there is a little green triangle type icon in the top left corner. I know from reading up that this is supposed to be some sort of error in the cell

Actually, not an error per se; more of a warning. And in my experience, Excel's perception of something "wrong" (suspicious) is incorrect 99% of the time.

For example, you might write =SUM(B10:B20) in column C. Excel might flag that with a warning ("error") because the formula does not include all of the contiguous cells, which might be B2:B100. However, you wrote B10:B20 intentionally; not an error, at all.

I prefer to disable these warnings because they are distracting. Click File > Options > Formulas, and uncheckmark "Enable background error checking".

Alternatively, uncheckmark some warnings selectively.

Also click Reset Ignored Errors after you confirm that the warnings are useless, even if you leave "Enable ... checking" checkmarked.

Originally Posted by rachie2017

if the icon means it has been tampered with [....]

Not at all. It would have been helpful if the originator of the Excel file had looked at each warning, then clicked Reset Ignored Errors. The fact that he/she did not is more indicative of the irrelevant nature of the warnings than of anything truly wrong, IMHO.

Thanks guys. I've realised I don't know enough about excel to understand the replies Especially since I only have a copy of the spreadsheet so no way of knowing what it means. Thanks anyway for your help much appreciated.

Originally Posted by rachie2017

Thanks guys. I've realised I don't know enough about excel to understand the replies Especially since I only have a copy of the spreadsheet so no way of knowing what it means.

Ah,yes. You wrote: "as it is only a copy I cannot click on it to see what it means". At the time, I understood that to mean that you only have a hardcopy (printout). But I forgot that when I wrote my response.

Bottom line: those corner indicators are probably just warnings, not errors.

And often, the warnings are misdirections, since Excel does not really know what "you" (i.e. the author of the Excel file) meant to write.

Most importantly, they are not evidence of tampering.

Their only usefulness in a hardcopy is: if the numbers in the hardcopy seem "off", the corners indicators might be hints about where the author might have made errors. Then again, the errors might be somewhere else altogether.

I hope that is a little more understandable, and it puts your mind at ease.