Re: How to get rid of #VALUE!

[Larry Alkoff <labradley mindspring com>]

Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-08-02 at 16:58 -0600, Larry Alkoff wrote:
> > I have a spreadsheet with only 3 calumns,
> > debits, credits and balance.
> >
> > Starting from row 1 with a 0 balance,
> > my formula is
> > =(b1+c2-d2)
> >
> > The formula is copied from the first entry and pasted about 150 rows down.
> >
> > The formula seems simple enough but at row 50 I get repeated entries
> > of  $VALUE!  all the way down.
> >
> > The column widths seem adequate.
> >
> > Can anyone help?
>
> Hi,
>
> this has nothing to do with column widths. Look a the first occurrence
> of #VALUE and the content of the formula. It refers to three cells in
> the debits,credits and balances columns. One of those cells is likely to
> contain something unusual. 
>
> Andreas


Thanks very much Andreas.

I really didn't know what was causing the problem,
but when I entered a simple numeral 1 in either the debit or credit 
column in a row that contained $VALUE!, about 10 to 40 rows would clear 
up.  Just as you said although I discovered this by just experimenting. 
 I did this "repair" about 4 times and cleared my entire spreadsheet.

Since the spreadsheet then was cleared up, I was satisfied
but am kind of wondering if there is a way to identify what caused the 
problem. FWIW, the original files (both .xls and .gnumeric) are still 
virgin.  The original file was a .xls spreadsheet do who knows what was 
in there.

I'm slowly learning gnumeric as a refugee from a 1985 version of 
SuperCalc!  Luckily it will export to a Lotus 123 format which gnumeric 
imports perfectly.