Copyright

This document is Copyright © 2021 by the LibreOffice Documentation Team. Contributors are listed below. You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html), version 3 or later, or the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), version 4.0 or later.

All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.

Contributors

To this edition

Felipe Viggiano

Kees Kriek

Jean Hollis Weber

To previous editions

Barbara Duprey	Jean Hollis Weber	Claire Wood
Kees Kriek	Steve Fanning	Gordon Bates
Felipe Viggiano

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Publication date and software version

Published May 2021. Based on LibreOffice 7.1 Community.
Other versions of LibreOffice may differ in appearance and functionality.

Introduction to Calc error codes

Calc provides feedback for errors of miscalculation, incorrect use of functions, invalid cell references and values, and other user initiated mistakes. The feedback may be displayed within the cell that contains the error (Figure 1), or on the Status bar (Figure 2), or in both, depending on the type of error. Generally speaking, if the error occurs in the cell that is selected (or contains the cursor), the error message is displayed on the Status bar.

As an example, Figure 1 shows the error code returned when a column is too narrow to display the entire formatted date. The date displayed within the input line, 04/05/1998, would fit within the cell without a problem, but the format used by the cell produces the date value Sunday, April 05, 1998.

Figure 1: Error codes displayed within cells

When the cell displaying the #REF! error code in Figure 1 is selected, the Status bar displays the error message as shown in Figure 2. This message is more descriptive than the message displayed in the cell, but it still may not provide enough information to correctly diagnose the problem. For fuller explanations, consult the following tables and the Help topic, Error Codes in LibreOffice Calc.

Figure 2: An error message displayed in the Status bar

This appendix presents error codes in two tables.

1) Table 1 lists error strings which are displayed within the cell that actually contains the error. Except in the case of the ### error, they all correspond to a Calc error code number. Alphanumeric codes such as Err502 and Err511 can also appear in cells; these are not separately identified in the Table 1 but their meanings are given in Table 2.

2) Table 2 explains all of the error codes, listed by code number, including those error codes in the first table.

Tip

You can use the ERRORTYPE() function to find the code number for an error occurring in a different cell. Refer to the Help system for more detail about this function.

Error codes displayed within cells

Table 1: Error codes in cells

Code	Message	Explanation of the error
N/A	###	The column is too narrow to display the complete formatted contents of the cell. This is not really an error value, so there is no corresponding numerical error code. The solutions to this problem are to increase the width of the column, or select Format > Cells > Alignment and click either Wrap text automatically or Shrink to fit cell size in the Properties area to make the text match the current column width.
503	#NUM!	A calculation resulted in an overflow of the defined value range.
519	#VALUE!	The formula within the cell returns a value that does not correspond to the definition of the formula or functions used. This error could also mean that the cell referenced by the formula contains text instead of a number.
524	#REF!	The formula within the cell uses a reference that does not exist. Either a column or row description name could not be resolved, or the column, row, or sheet that contains a referenced cell is missing.
525	#NAME?	An identifier could not be evaluated: no valid reference, no valid domain name, no column/row label, no macro, incorrect decimal divider, add-in not found. For example, entering in a cell =sum(bob*5) where there is no cell named “bob” or containing the text “bob” generates this error.
532	#DIV/0!	Division operator / if the denominator is 0. Some more functions return this error; see next table for details.

General error codes

The following table is an overview of the most common error messages for LibreOffice Calc.