Is There a Problem Here?

If there were such a thing the Analyst Scouts, it’d have the same motto as the Boy Scouts: Always Be Prepared.

A good analyst is thinking two steps ahead of his data, anticipating problems and taking preventive action.

Errors are common in Excel formulas. It may be referring to a cell or sheet that doesn’t exist, for example. In the example below, an error would result from dividing by zero.

This results in messy formatting and unworkable cells results. Error cells do not play nice with others — you cannot subtotal them, for example.

Avoid these problems with IFERROR. It works like any if statement: If x = yes, do y, if x = no, do z. In our case, Excel will do X if there is NOT an error, and Y if there IS an error. 

For any cells where getting the % change results in a division by zero, we ask Excel instead to give us a 0.

Nothing to see here… just a prepared analyst.