When you work with Excel formulas you might come across something that's called circular reference.
So let's say you receive this file from your colleague.
You open it and you immediately get this pop up message.
There are one or more circular references where a formula refers to its own cell either directly or
indirectly.
So this might cause them to calculate incorrectly.
Try removing or changing these references or moving the formulas to different cells.
Now you're wondering how do I find that cell causing this problem?
You have a lot of worksheets, where with that cell be?
This is what you need to do.
Go to the formulas tab, under formula auditing there's something called error checking.
Click on it and you see this circular reference and here it tells you the sheet name as well as the
cell that's causing this circular reference.
Click on it and it takes you directly there.
So this sheet is called "circular ref"
The cell is B5 and why do we get this?
Can you spot the problem in the formula?
It's adding the result of the formula to itself. So that's a circular reference.
It's a mistake in this case I just need "=B3+B4" and press enter.
So once that's corrected. When I go back to error checking, circular reference is grayed out.
So just keep this in mind that you don't by mistake include the cell that you have the formula in, in your calculation
as well. Because that's going to cause this circular reference.