Urgent Excel help please!

Lifeisbutadream

Hi - I use excel for all my invoicing and quoting for my small business. I have just gone in to do a quote and all pre set up formulas have stopped working!! Has anyone got any clue why???

Thank you in anticipation..

bingo_bango

One possible issue (not a nice one!) is that you have manually amended some of the figures in a previous invioce, and then saved that. If so, then the formulae would not have the same references to work from. That may explain why they no longer work.

It's unlikely that there has been a system failure in Excel, so I'd look back at previous work you were doing, (last invoice first) and see if you can see any reason the formulae no longer work.

Just to clarify, what error message are you getting, if any?

kazwookie

Do you have a weekly back up?

If so you could re run that, and go from there.

Lifeisbutadream

No its definately nothing like any of the above - I get no message - it just doesnt work!

I have set up from scratch, a test, which works, but anything I have doen previously does not - even the very oldest.

The figures are all there, but if I replace the figures, the formula does not update (for instance, all the cells are set up so that if I put in a figure, it will add on VAT and then show a final figure. If I put in a figure now, it does not change th eVAT amount or add up the total)

I have not yet looked at the back up from last week - its in a different building - that is my next step...

Belnahua

It might be that the auto calculation is turned off?

Click on Tools, then Options. In the Calculation Tab, check to see if the calculation is set to Automatic or Manual. I think it's F9 to force a spreadsheet to calculate.

Lifeisbutadream

Right - looked at the back up and there is no problem there.

Unfortunately, I have done a lot of work since the last back-up which I will lose - if I can fix the problem rather than copying the back up then I would rather do that... any suggestions would be very gratefully received..

Lifeisbutadream

Belnahua wrote: »

It might be that the auto calculation is turned off?

Click on Tools, then Options. In the Calculation Tab, check to see if the calculation is set to Automatic or Manual. I think it's F9 to force a spreadsheet to calculate.

I am using Windows Vista - so no 'tools' then 'options'??

superscaper

Lifeisbutadream wrote: »

I am using Windows Vista - so no 'tools' then 'options'??

I assume you mean you're using Excel 2007 (makes no difference what operating system you're using, e.g. I use Excel 2007 on XP and others may be using Excel 2003 on Vista).

Belnahua

Lifeisbutadream wrote: »

I am using Windows Vista - so no 'tools' then 'options'??

Sorry, cannot help with Office 2007, we upgraded back to 2003 from 2007 at work as it was causing us so many problems! But I think F9 is still valid.

It was the toolbars that caused us the grief!

All I can suggest is try a new simple sheet with one simple formula in it; to see if it's a setting.

I do know that it is important that all the Office Updates are applied, as there is a huge bug in Excel 2007 that causes a miscalculation under certain conditions!

superscaper

Belnahua wrote: »

I do know that it is important that all the Office Updates are applied, as there is a huge bug in Excel 2007 that causes a miscalculation under certain conditions!

Very specific, only if a calculation was meant to give the answer 65,535. But as you mention that was fixed in service pack 1 which was released quite a while ago.

Lifeisbutadream

Belnahua wrote: »

Sorry, cannot help with Office 2007, we upgraded back to 2003 from 2007 at work as it was causing us so many problems! But I think F9 is still valid.

It was the toolbars that caused us the grief!

All I can suggest is try a new simple sheet with one simple formula in it; to see if it's a setting.

I do know that it is important that all the Office Updates are applied, as there is a huge bug in Excel 2007 that causes a miscalculation under certain conditions!

A new sheet with the same formula works - it is just the ones that are already set up that dont. It is possible to re-do everything, using the already saved back-up, but it will take weeks! there is a hell of a lot of work set up. I am alsol worried about what caused it to happen! what are the updates that I should apply??