Excel Error Checker & Spreadsheet Auditor
Upload a spreadsheet and we'll check it for broken formulas, self-referencing cells, mismatched columns, and other common mistakes — explained in plain English, no spreadsheet expertise required. Need to understand just one formula instead? The formula translator breaks any single formula down step by step.
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- 01Upload a spreadsheet, or click to browse
- 02Formulas, references, and structure are checked right in your browser
- 03Review the findings by category, then download or copy the report
In plain English
Worth a look
Evaluation order
Excel works from the innermost operation outward — the same order its own Evaluate Formula tool steps through. Each step shows what that piece would produce on its own; for IF-style functions, Excel may skip a branch entirely once it already knows the answer.
Structure
How the formula nests, with what each part evaluates to on its own — not every branch shown here necessarily runs in the real calculation.
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Sample values
Spreadsheet Auditor fills in plausible sample data for every cell and range the formula touches, so there's a real result straight away. Edit any value to test your own numbers.
Formula knowledge base
A plain-English guide to the functions you'll use most, grouped by what they help with. Click any one to open it up — the technical syntax is there too, tucked below the explanation for whenever you need it.
Where Excel and Google Sheets actually differ
Most everyday formulas work identically in both. These are the places behavior genuinely diverges — mainly around arrays and a handful of app-specific functions.
Arrays spill automatically in Excel; Sheets often needs ARRAYFORMULA
Modern Excel automatically "spills" a multi-value result like FILTER or SORT into the cells below and to the right. Google Sheets does this for FILTER, SORT, and UNIQUE too, but many ordinary formulas only apply to a whole range at once in Sheets when wrapped in ARRAYFORMULA — in Excel, that wrapper usually isn't needed.
Sheets has built-in regular expressions; Excel doesn't
REGEXMATCH, REGEXEXTRACT, and REGEXREPLACE are Google Sheets–only functions for pattern matching beyond simple wildcards. Excel has no native regex functions — the usual workarounds lean on SUBSTITUTE, FIND, and the simple * and ? wildcards that both apps support in functions like COUNTIF and VLOOKUP.
A handful of functions exist in only one app
IMPORTRANGE, IMPORTHTML, GOOGLEFINANCE, and QUERY (a small SQL-like function) are Sheets-only, with no formula-bar equivalent in Excel — Excel's closest tools (Power Query, Stock/Geography data types) live outside the formula bar entirely and work quite differently.
Recalculation timing can differ for volatile functions
TODAY(), NOW(), and RAND() recalculate on their own schedule in both apps, but exactly which edits trigger a full recalculation isn't always identical — worth double-checking manually in a sheet that needs to stay perfectly current.
Everything else in this tool's dictionary works the same
SUM, IF, VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, the text functions, the date functions, LET, and LAMBDA all behave the same way in both apps for the cases covered here — the differences above are the exceptions, not the rule.
Quick reference
A glossary of terms used throughout this tool, and every error code Excel and Google Sheets can show.
Glossary
- Absolute reference
- A cell reference with $ signs, like $B$2, that stays fixed when the formula is copied to other cells.
- Relative reference
- An ordinary reference like B2, without $ signs, that shifts to match its new position when the formula is copied.
- Named range
- A plain-language name (like "TaxRate") assigned to a cell or range, so formulas can refer to it by name instead of by address.
- Array formula
- A single formula that works on a whole list or range of values at once, rather than one cell at a time.
- Spill range
- The block of cells a dynamic-array formula (like FILTER or SORT) automatically fills with its results.
- Volatile function
- A function such as TODAY(), NOW(), or RAND() that recalculates on its own, even when nothing it depends on has changed.
- Argument
- One of the values passed to a function inside its parentheses, such as the range in SUM(range).
- Nested function
- A function used as an argument inside another function, like the ROUND inside SUM(ROUND(A2,2),B2).
- Helper column
- An extra column added purely to support a calculation — often to break a complex formula into simpler, more visible steps.
- Circular reference
- A formula that refers back to its own cell, directly or indirectly, which most spreadsheets flag as an error by default.
Every error code, at a glance
| Code | What it means |
|---|
Spreadsheet auditor
Drop in an Excel or Google Sheets file — .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, .csv, or .ods — and this checks every sheet for errors, formulas that end up pointing back at themselves, and formulas that don't match the rest of their column. It also lists every function used in the file and a few useful stats about it. Everything happens right here in your browser — the file is read on your own computer and is never uploaded anywhere.
Drop a spreadsheet here
or click to browse — .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, .csv, .ods
Errors found
Cells where Excel or Sheets showed an error — like #DIV/0! or #N/A — the last time this file was saved.
Formulas that refer back to themselves
Sometimes called a "circular reference." This is a formula that — either directly, or by way of a chain of other cells — ends up pointing back at its own cell. Excel and Sheets usually can't calculate a proper answer for these.
Formulas that don't match the rest of their column
Most columns follow one repeated pattern — the same formula copied down every row. These are the cells that break that pattern, which is often (but not always) a sign one row got missed or edited by mistake.
Missing formulas in an otherwise filled-down column
A column that's otherwise full of the same formula copied down every row, but with a genuinely blank cell sitting in the middle — a different mistake from the one above, since here there's no formula at all where the pattern says one should be. This often happens when a row gets inserted, or a formula never gets copied all the way down.
Values sitting where a formula should be
A column that's otherwise filled with the same formula copied down every row, but with a plain typed-in number or piece of text sitting in the middle instead of a formula — often from copying a result and pasting it back as a value, or typing over a formula by mistake.
Dates that look like they're stored as text
A date that's really just text (rather than a proper Excel/Sheets date) looks perfectly normal, but silently sorts in the wrong order and can't be used in date math, filtering, or duration calculations. This is a common, completely silent mistake — no error ever appears for it.
Text with an extra space
A cell that looks identical to another one but has an extra space at the start or end — invisible to the eye, but enough to make a lookup like VLOOKUP, or a plain side-by-side comparison, silently fail to match. The dots below mark exactly where the extra space is.
The same number typed directly into many formulas
When one number — a tax rate, a fee, a conversion factor — is typed straight into many different formulas instead of every formula pointing at a single "assumptions" cell, updating it later means hunting down and editing every one of them by hand. This isn't a mistake as such, just something worth tidying up.
Merged cells
Handy for a title or header, but merged cells are a classic source of confusion elsewhere in a sheet — they can silently break sorting, filtering, and some formulas (like a plain fill-down) that expect every cell to stand on its own. Not necessarily a mistake, just worth knowing about.
Hidden sheets, rows & columns
Sheets, rows, or columns marked hidden in this file — invisible in the normal view, so it's easy to forget they're there at all. Not necessarily a problem, but worth a look before this file goes to anyone else, since hidden data still travels with the file even though it isn't on screen.
Functions worth double-checking
These functions aren't wrong to use, but each behaves in a way that can cause a quiet surprise later — a value that changes every time the sheet recalculates, or a reference that doesn't update the way a normal cell reference would.
File size breakdown
Functions used in this file
Every built-in function (like SUM, IF, or VLOOKUP) found anywhere in the file, with the most-used one first.