Skip to main content

Error Handling

 Formula errors are common. If you have a data set with hundreds of records, a divide-by-zero and an #N/A errors are bound to pop up now and then.

In the past, preventing errors required Herculean efforts. Nod your head knowingly if you’ve ever knocked out =IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(A2,Table,2,0),"Not Found",VLOOKUP(A2,Table,2,0)). Besides being really long to type, that solution requires twice as many VLOOKUPs. First, you do a VLOOKUP to see if the VLOOKUP is going to produce an error. Then you do the same VLOOKUP again to get the non-error result.

Excel 2010 introduced the greatly improved =IFERROR(Formula,Value If Error). I know that IFERROR sounds like the old ISERROR, ISERR, and ISNA functions, but it is completely different.

This is a brilliant function: =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,Table,2,0),"Not Found"). If you have 1,000 VLOOKUPs and only 5 return #N/A, then the 995 that worked require only a single VLOOKUP. Only the 5 VLOOKUPs returned #N/A that need to move on to the second argument of IFERROR.

Oddly, Excel 2013 added the IFNA() function. It is just like IFERROR but only looks for #N/A errors. One might imagine a strange situation where the value in the lookup table is found, but the resulting answer is a division by 0. If you want to preserve the divide-by-zero error for some reason, you can use IFNA() to do this.

A formula of =IFNA(VLOOKUP(),"Not Found") makes sure that you never see a #N/A error.

Of course, the person who built the lookup table should have used IFERROR to prevent the division by zero in the first place. In the figure below, the "n.m." is a former manager’s code for “not meaningful.”

The #DIV/0 error is changed to "n.m." by using =IFERROR(F9/E9,"n.m.")

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Import CSV In Power BI

  Import CSV file Click on Get Data à More à File option and select Text/CSV . Navigate to the CSV file which needs to be imported FL_insurance_sample.csv . Select the file and click on Open. FL_insurance_sampleDownload In the CSV window on top we have 3 dropdowns, preview of data and data load options.  Select Load and it will load to power query editor window. In the Power query editor the CSV file is loaded as a Queries . In power query editor we can edit, clean and transform the file as required. 3 Dropdowns and Data Load File Origin – Type of file origin. By default its 1252 Wester European (Windows). It’s the file type as per OS and region and country. Delimiter – Delimiter for column separation. By default it detects the delimiter from data , If the delimiter is not from the default options then we can select custom delimiter. Data Type Detection – By default it detects data types of columns based on top 200 rows, we can select entire data or do not detect data type ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Protect Formula Cells

The use of worksheet protection in Excel is a little strange. Using the steps below, you can quickly protect just the formula cells in your worksheet. It seems unusual, but all 16 billion cells on a worksheet start out with their Locked property set to True. You need to unlock all of the cells first: Select all cells by using the icon above and to the left of cell A1. Press  Ctrl+1  (that is the number 1) to open the Format Cells dialog. In the Format Cells dialog, go to the Protection tab. Uncheck Locked. Click OK. While all cells are still selected, select Home, Find & Select, Formulas. At this point, only the formula cells are selected. Press  Ctrl+1  again to display the Format Cells dialog. On the Protection tab, choose Locked to lock all of the formula cells. Locking cells does nothing until you protect the worksheet. On the Review tab, choose Protect Sheet. In the Protect Sheet dialog, choose if you want people to be able to select your formula cells or no...
Post a Comment
Read more

20 Power BI Dax Measures

Power bi 20 dax measures 20 DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) measures in Power BI with examples: Total Sales: scss Copy code Total Sales = SUM (Sales[Amount]) Average Sales Price: scss Copy code Avg Sales Price = AVERAGE (Sales[Amount]) Total Units Sold: mathematica Copy code Total Units Sold = SUM ( Sales [ Quantity ] ) Total Customers: scss Copy code Total Customers = COUNTROWS (Customer) Total Products: mathematica Copy code Total Products = COUNTROWS ( Product ) Maximum Sales Amount: scss Copy code Max Sales Amount = MAX (Sales[Amount]) Minimum Sales Amount: scss Copy code Min Sales Amount = MIN (Sales[Amount]) Sales Growth Percentage: mathematica Copy code Sales Growth % = ( Total Sales - [ Total Sales Last Year ] ) / [ Total Sales Last Year ] Total Profit: scss Copy code Total Profit = SUM (Sales[Profit]) Total Orders: scss Copy code Total Orders = COUNTROWS (Orders) Total Customers with Sales: css Copy code Total Customers with Sales = COUNTROWS( FILTER ...
Post a Comment
Read more