The reason why you got this error is because an Excel file can only have approximately 4,000 different combinations of cell formats.  At first this might seem like a lot, but think about all the unique formatting characteristics that can be applied to a cell.

• Fonts: including the font, font size, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, color, etc.
• Borders: including which side of the cell has a border (top, left, right, or bottom), border color, border thickness (or weight), etc.
• Fills: including fill color, and patterns.
• Number formatting: such as General, Number, Currency, Accounting, Date, Time, Percentage, Fraction, Scientific, Text, Special, or Custom.  Not to mention the number of decimal places shown.
• Alignment: Top, bottom, left, right, centered, centered across selection, indented, orientation degrees, wrapped text, shrink to fit, merged cells, text direction, etc.

Any unique combination of the above cell formats counts towards the 4,000 limit, however if several cells share exactly the same formatting, it only counts as one.

For example, assuming that all other formats are the same, a 3×3 cell “boxed” with a border going around it would have nine different cell formats, considering that no cell in the group would share the same side border formatting (see below).

 To fix this, simplify the formats of the cells in your file, by using some of the suggestions below:

• Use only one or two standard fonts.  For example, if you want your headings to be bold, and the data to be in a regular style, do so consistently.
• Use consistent borders in your worksheets.  Maybe just box in headings and your data points to make it easier for your files users to read.
• Clear out unnecessary fill colors and patterns.
• Make sure your numbers are consistently presented (i.e. percentages are shown as such with the same number of decimal points, dollars are shown in the currency, or accounting format, etc.).

Also, consider clearing the formats of blank cells.  To do this, click Edit | Go To | Special | Blanks.  This will highlight all cells that do not contain data.  Next, click Edit | Clear | Formats (or All).  This will clear all the blank cells of any formatting that have been applied to them.  Be careful however, as this could have unintended consequences if you’ve filled the cells in a row or column to act as a “border” between sections in your worksheet, or if you’ve used the Center Across Selection formatting.

After done simplifying your cell formats across your entire file, save, close, and then re-open before adding any new cell formats.

It’s possible that your company’s colors are not included in the standard colors found in Excel.  If you’d like to use them in your workbook, you’ll need to change the standard colors.

In order to do this, select Tools | Options | Colors tab (in pre-2007 versions of Excel), or Microsoft Office Button | Excel Options | Save | Colors (in Excel 2007). 

Next, click on the color you wish to change, and click Modify.  You can choose from one of the colors on the Standard tab, or you can click the Custom tab if you know the RGB or HSL format of the color you wish to use. 

Repeat these steps as often as necessary, then when you return to Excel, you can change the fill, font, and chart colors in your workbook to your new custom colors.

The menu below is a screenshot of the Paste Special menu from Excel 2007, which, except for the “All using Source theme” option, is the same menu as is found in earlier versions of Excel.

Excel 2007 Paste Special options

By pasting using the default options as shown in the image, Paste Special will paste the same way that the regular Paste option will in Excel.  To get more bang for your buck, let’s explore the various options that Paste Special offers.  Note that the following “Paste” options are assuming that you are selecting “None” from the Operation section (discussed below), and that Skip blanks and Transpose are not checked.

• Formulas: Assuming that the cells you copied contained formulas, you can use this option to paste only the formulas in your destination cells.  This is useful, because it retains the formatting of the destination cells, including comments, which might be different from the source cells.  Be careful with this, as any cells referenced in your formulas will change unless they are absolute or mixed references.
• Values: This option will only paste the values (numeric or text) as displayed in the source cell.  It doesn’t matter if the source cell has a formula in it, Excel will convert the data and only paste the values as displayed in the source cell.  This is useful if you wish to paste data from one worksheet that contains formulas into another that does not.
• Formats: This option is the opposite of the previous two options.  Where the previous options pasted data (formulas or values), this option only pastes formats, and is similar in use as the Format Painter  option found in Excel.  This is useful if you have a range of cells with data that are formatted in a particular way that you would like to copy to another location.  If the data is not necessary to paste, then this option will strip out the unnecessary data.
• Comments: If you have a cell with a comment that you would like to have in another cell, this option allows you to paste only the comment, without pasting any of the formats or data from the source cell.  This option saves you the time of re-typing the comment, while preserving the data and formats in the destination cell.
• Validation: When creating Data Validation rules in your cells, you might want to apply the rules to other cells after they have been created.  You can do that with this option without copying any source data or formats, and preserving the destination data and formats.
• All using Source theme: This option is new in Excel 2007.  It pastes all the information from the source cell (numbers, formulas, text, formats, comments, etc.) and applies the source worksheets theme’s colors, fonts and graphics to the destination.
• All except borders: This option will paste any numbers, formulas, text, comments and formats except for borders from the source cell and paste them in the destination cell.
• Column widths: To present a uniform appearance across your spreadsheet, the column widths option will allow you to copy one column’s width and apply it to whatever columns you select.  If your spreadsheet had one really narrow column of data, next to a very wide column, which was next to a regular sized column, you could copy the regular sized column, select the narrow and wide columns and paste the column width so that all three columns are of equal width.
• Formulas and number formats: This option will paste only the formula from the source cell and the number formats applied to that cell.  It won’t paste the other formats (border, fill color, font, etc.), just the number formatting, such as percentage, currency, accounting, scientific, etc.
• Values and number formats: This option will paste the same information as the Formulas and number formats option above, except it won’t paste the formulas from the source cell, it will only paste the values.  This is similar to the Values option discussed above with the addition of the number formatting.

The Operation section allows you to perform a mathematical operation with the data you have copied.

For illustration purposes, I’m going to assume that the source cell to be copied contains the number 4, and the destination cell contains the number 10.  Below I’ll discuss the results of each Operation option.  Also, assume that the “All” option is selected from the “Paste” section with Skip blanks and Transpose left unchecked.

• None:  As discussed previously, this operation will perform no arithmetic, and therefore the resulting number in the destination cell will be 4.
• Add:  By selecting 4 from the source cell and pasting it into the destination, which contains 10, Excel will add 10+4 to return 14.
• Subtract:  Again, Excel will subtract 10-4 to return 6.
• Multiply: Excel will take the product of 10 and 4 to return 40.
• Divide: Excel divides 10/4 to return 2.5.

Finally, you’ll notice three more options on the menu: Skip blanks, Transpose and Paste Link.

• Skip blanks: This option does just as it says.  Say you have a set of data in cells A1:A5, where A1 = 100, A2 = 200, A3 = blank, A4 = blank, and A5 = 500.  Now you have another list of numbers in B1:B5, where B1 = 600, B2 = 700, B3 = 800, B4 = 900, and B5 = 1,000.  If you copy the cells A1:A5, then select cell B1, go to the Paste Special menu, check the Skip blanks box and click OK, the values you should see in B1:B5 are as follows: B1 = 100, B2 = 200, B3 = 800, B4 = 900, and B5 = 500.  This is because the Skip blanks option tells Excel to only paste what is in the source cells where there is data to paste.  If the cells are blank, Excel will skip over them and not paste anything, which is why cells B3 and B4 had the values of 800 and 900 respectively instead of being blank.
• Transpose: Take the same original list from cells B1:B5, going sequentially from 600 through 1,000.  Copy cells B1:B5, then select cell C1.  Go to the Paste Special menu, check Transpose and click OK.  The values in cells C1:G1 should be the same sequential values (600 through 1,000) from B1:B5.  Essentially, all this option does is take a copied list of numbers from a column and pastes them across a row, or copies a list of numbers from a row and pastes them down a column.
• Paste Link: This option can save a lot of time if you’re working with multiple worksheets or multiple files.  If you want your destination cell to link to the source cell you can use this option.  Assume you have a value in cell A1 that you want cell C1 to link to.  You can copy cell A1, select cell C1, go to the Paste Special menu and choose Paste Link.  In cell C1, you should see the formula =$A$1.  If you select multiple cells to paste, the formula will be a relative reference, and not an absolute reference (i.e. it won’t have the dollar signs $).

As you can see there are many applications for the Paste Special feature, which can save you a lot of time if you only need to copy a limited amount of information from your source cells.

Using the quarterly sales example above, assume that you’ve taken the time to set up your spreadsheet with placeholder columns for the remainder of the year. When printing the information, you don’t want to just delete the columns, only having to recreate them in the future, and you also don’t want to have to manually hide/unhide them either.

You can use a macro to toggle between hiding and unhiding these empty columns fairly easily. The first bit of code will determine if the total in row 8 for columns B through M is 0. If it is, it will hide the column, otherwise it will make sure the column is not hidden. The second bit of code will select columns B through M and make sure they all are not hidden, so that you can toggle between hiding the unused columns, and showing all the columns.

To use this in your own spreadsheet, you may need to change a few things. 1) Change the Range reference (i.e. “B8:M8″) to whatever range you want evaluated. 2) Change “Columns” in Rng = Selection.Columns.Count to “Rows” if the range you are evaluating is a range of rows not columns. 3) If the criteria is something other than “0″, change the “0″ in If ActiveCell = 0 to whatever that criteria happens to be. And finally 4) the two lines that say ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Select simply moves the selected cell down 0 cells and to the right one cell. If you’re evaluating down a range of rows, change the 0 to a 1 and the 1 to a 0 so that it moves the selected cell down 1 cell and to the right 0 cells. (Note you can move up a cell by inserting a -1 as the first number and to the left by inserting a -1 as the second number).

Need help? Use our nifty guide to help figure out how to install and use your macros.

Hide Unused Columns:

Sub hide_unused()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
'
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Range("B8:M8").Select
Rng = Selection.Columns.Count
For i = 1 To Rng
If ActiveCell = 0 Then
Selection.EntireColumn.Hidden = True
ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Select
Else: Selection.EntireColumn.Hidden = False
ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Select
End If
Next i
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub
Unhide all Columns:

Sub unhide_all()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
'
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Columns("B:M").Select
Selection.EntireColumn.Hidden = False
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub


Select the area where you want to highlight alternating rows.

Go to the Format menu and select Conditional Formatting.

For Condition 1, select “Formula Is”, and type in “=MOD(ROW(),2)=0″ if you want to highlight every even row, or type “=MOD(ROW(),2)=1″ if you want to highlight every odd row.

Click on the Format button, and choose the format you want your highlighted rows to have (i.e. font, color, background, patterns, etc.).

Click OK, and you should have every other row highlighted.

Thankfully, there’s a macro can speed up this process. The macro below assumes that you’re starting in the left most column in your list (in my example, column A), and will insert three rows below (one for the address, one for the city, state and zip, and one blank one between records). It then takes the address from the second column (column B) and puts it below the name (row 2). It then proceeds to take the city, state and zip and puts them in the appropriate columns below the address (in row 3). Finally, it will move down to row 5, where the next record starts and repeats the process over again. It will continue to repeat (or loop) until it runs into a blank cell in column A. The result is a list of all your contacts formatted to be used on an envelope.

You’ll also notice that I added “Application.ScreenUpdating = False” to keep the screen from updating everytime the macro did something. If you have a list with a few hundred or even thousands of people it would get pretty obnoxious to see the screen flicker everytime something was cut and pasted. At the end “Application.ScreenUpdating = True” is added to allow Excel to reveal the final masterpiece.

I only wish I thought of this macro when I was formatting my wedding invitation list!

Copy all the code below. Paste it into your workbook’s Visual Basic editor, either under a Microsoft Excel Object or Module.

Need help? Use our nifty guide to help figure out how to install and use your macros.

Sub FormatList()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
'
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Do Until ActiveCell.Value = ""
ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Range("A1:A3").Select
Selection.EntireRow.Insert
ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 1).Range("A1").Select
Selection.Cut
ActiveCell.Offset(1, -1).Range("A1").Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
ActiveCell.Offset(-1, 2).Range("A1").Select
Selection.Cut
ActiveCell.Offset(2, -2).Range("A1").Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
ActiveCell.Offset(-2, 3).Range("A1").Select
Selection.Cut
ActiveCell.Offset(2, -2).Range("A1").Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
ActiveCell.Offset(-2, 3).Range("A1").Select
Selection.Cut
ActiveCell.Offset(2, -2).Range("A1").Select
ActiveSheet.Paste
ActiveCell.Offset(2, -2).Range("A1").Select
Loop
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

Note: These macros won’t change the output of a cell with a formula in it.

Copy all of the code below. Paste it into your workbook’s Visual Basic editor, either under a Microsoft Excel Object or Module.
Need help? Use our nifty guide to help figure out how to install and use your macros.

Lower Case:

Sub TextLowerCase()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
'
Dim cell As Range
For Each cell In Selection.Cells
If cell.HasFormula = False Then
cell = LCase(cell)
End If
Next
End Sub


Upper Case:

Sub TextUpperCase()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
'
Dim cell As Range
For Each cell In Selection.Cells
If cell.HasFormula = False Then
cell = UCase(cell)
End If
Next
End Sub


Title (Proper) Case:

Sub TextTitleCase()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
'
Dim cell As Range
For Each cell In Selection.Cells
If cell.HasFormula = False Then
cell = Application.Proper(cell)
End If
Next
End Sub


To use this macro, select your data, and then run the macro. If your list of data is large, give the macro a couple seconds to run, as it will evaluate each cell in your list. It won’t remove data from cells that contain text, formulas, numbers, etc. It will only add a space to cells that are truly blank. After running this macro successfully, you really shouldn’t notice a visual difference in your spreadsheet. You’ll only notice a change if you know that a particular cell did not have a space in it prior to running the macro and notice that it does after running it.

Copy all of the code below. Paste it into your workbook’s Visual Basic editor, in a Module, or Microsoft Excel Object (This Workbook, Sheet1, Sheet2, etc.).

Need help? Use our nifty guide to help figure out how to install and use your macros.

Sub Add_Spaces()
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Dim SelectedCell As Range

For Each SelectedCell In Selection
Selection.Replace What:="", Replacement:=" ", LookAt:=xlPart, _
SearchOrder:=xlByRows, MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False, _
ReplaceFormat:=False
Next
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

The macro below will take whatever worksheet you’re on and will remove all the spaces from the otherwise aesthetically empty cells. It won’t remove spaces from cells that contain text, formulas, numbers, etc. After running this macro successfully, you really shouldn’t notice a visual difference in your spreadsheet. You’ll only notice a change if you know that a particular cell had a space prior to running the macro and notice that it doesn’t now.

Copy all of the code below. Paste it into your workbook’s Visual Basic editor, in a Module, or Microsoft Excel Object (This Workbook, Sheet1, Sheet2, etc.).

Need help? Use our nifty guide to help figure out how to install and use your macros.

Sub Remove_Spaces()
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM

Dim rangeSheet As Range
Dim rangeText As Range

Set rangeText = Cells.SpecialCells( _
xlCellTypeConstants, _
xlTextValues)
For Each rangeSheet In rangeText
If Trim(rangeSheet.Value) = "" Then
rangeSheet.ClearContents
End If
Next
Set rangeText = Nothing
Set rangeSheet = Nothing
End Sub

Copy all of the code below. Paste it into your workbook’s Visual Basic editor, either under a Microsoft Excel Object or Module.

Need help? Use our nifty guide to help figure out how to install and use your macros.

Gridlines Off:

Sub gridlines_off()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
' Turn Excel Gridlines Off
'
ActiveWindow.DisplayGridlines = False
End Sub

Gridlines On:

Sub gridlines_on()
'
'MACROS BY EXCELZOOM.COM
' Turn Excel Gridlines On
'
ActiveWindow.DisplayGridlines = True
End Sub