Making Your Formulas Check for Errors

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 10, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


It is often helpful to check if a cell contains an error condition so that your formula can know how to calculate results that may be dependent on that cell. Excel provides the IFERROR function to help determine this information. The purpose of this function is to help simplify how you check for potential errors in your formulas. Consider a rather simple example:

=B8/B9

In most instances this formula will return a good result—unless cell B9 contains a zero value. In that case, Excel returns a #DIV/0! error. The traditional approach to trap this potentiality is to use the ISERROR function in this manner:

=IF(ISERROR(B8/B9),0,B8/B9)

The ISERROR function returns either True or False, depending on whether the expression being evaluated returns an error or not. The surrounding IF function can then act upon the value returned by ISERROR to determine what should be displayed.

The problem with this approach is that it is rather convoluted. Note, for instance, that your evaluation (B8/B9) needs to be included twice in the full formula. While that may not seem problematic with such a simple evaluation, with longer formulas it can be a real pain—at a minimum it makes your overall formula twice as long as it should be and provides two formulas that need to be kept in sync when you make changes.

This is where the IFERROR function comes into play. It helps simplify the formulas you create. The following is the equivalent of the traditional formula presented earlier:

=IFERROR(B8/B9,0)

In this instance, the formula B8/B9 is evaluated and, if it results in an error, the 0 value is returned. If there is no error, then the value of the formula being evaluated is instead returned.

You can find additional information about the IFERROR function at this web page:

https://exceljet.net/excel-functions/excel-iferror-function

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (7800) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Using a Different Footer on Secondary Pages

When printing a worksheet, you may want to have the footer different on the first page of your document than it is on ...

Discover More

Setting the Return Address Used in Word

When you create envelopes with Word, it normally displays a return address by default. If you can't get Word to retain ...

Discover More

Fixing Odd Sorting Behavior

When you sort data that contains both numbers and text, you may not get exactly the result that you expected. To know ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Summing Only Positive Values

If you have a series of values and you want to get a total of just the values that meet a specific criteria, then you ...

Discover More

Pulling a Phone Number with a Known First and Last Name

When using an Excel worksheet to store data (such as names and phone numbers), you may need a way to easily look up a ...

Discover More

Where Is that Text?

Looking for a formula that can return the address of a cell containing a text string? Look no further; the solution is in ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 7 - 2?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.