Subscribe in a readerWorking with Circular references in Excel
Introduction
If you've come to this page, chances are you've experienced the "Circular reference warning" popping up when you opened an Excel file or entered a formula. Excel detects a circular reference when a chain of calculations visits the same cell more than once. Many users get (very) confused by this message and have no idea what it is about. I'll try to demystify that message here!
You may also find an excerpt of parts of the article on the Microsoft Office blog
The next couple of pages discuss:
Comments
Showing last 8 comments of 25 in total (Show All Comments):Comment by: richie (2/8/2014 7:44:13 AM)Jan Karel Pieterse
hope you don't mind, can you give me your email add!,then i'll send you my format...
=)
Comment by: Chris (4/16/2014 7:15:59 AM)Hi Jan, I have i hope a basic question .
wish to input a value into a cell and multiply it by another cells value, but have the result show in the first cell.
b1 = a1*b1 . so that the formula is just =a1* the value that will be entered into bi at another time. i'd like not to have to enter the value in the formula bar but in the cell, if at all possible.
this is to create a daily calories calculator
regards chris
Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (4/16/2014 12:09:57 PM)Hi Chris,
Why not show the result in a different cell than the input cell? That is the better aproach because you'll be able to see both input value and result.
Comment by: Marnix (4/20/2014 10:52:52 AM)Hi JAn, hope you can help. I made a cricular reference in a cell, say cell A, that is accumulating a value from another cell, say cell B. However, the automatic sheet calculation makes that it updates cell A every time a change is made anywhere due to auto calculation. I only want to have cell A updated if I make a change to cell B. I do not want to set the sheet to Manual calculation. (PS: Iteration is set to 1). Thank sin advance, Marnix.
Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (4/28/2014 10:17:58 AM)Hi Marnix,
You can only do that if the value in the "watched" cell is changed from a fixed value (for instance empty) to something else:
=IF(A1="";Now();B1)
Comment by: Marnix (4/28/2014 9:45:55 PM)Hello Jan, many thanks for your suggestion. Translated to my case this did the trick: =IF( B1<>"" , A1+B1 , A1).
Cell A1 now accumulates any update of cell B1 without calculating other cells.
Thanks again!
regards Marnix
Comment by: Luiz Carlos Guilarducci (7/10/2014 5:17:27 PM)Let me explain my troubles, I'm using circular reference in my model to calculate interest income (My model is yearly, and i use the average between my cash balance from the year before and the current year). When I change the start date, my interest incomes go to infinite, and i need a cells to break the circularity and after return with it.
As my interest income are going to infinite, i use automatically a formula to chose 0 if interest income go to inifnite, otherwise 1. It is working well, but my boss doesn´t like this solution because normally people use cells to choose the circular reference or not.
I wanna know, if really there is a problem with my solution. What do you think? Have you ever used this solution?
Regards Luiz !
Comment by: Jan Karel Pieterse (7/11/2014 4:59:05 PM)Hi Luiz Carlos,
Your solution sounds perfectly feasible to me!
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