Comments on: Too Many Different Cell Formats in Excel

By: Anthony Giordano

Anthony Giordano — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 13:52:00 +0000

In reply to Arjay. Genius!!!

By: Arjay

Arjay — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 19:03:00 +0000

In reply to james fraasch. You are most welcome :-)

By: james fraasch

james fraasch — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 19:24:00 +0000

In reply to Arjay. Damn. This is the only thing that worked. You actually do have to clear the formatting. Save WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING. Close. Then re-open. Thanks!

By: Rebecca Hackett

Rebecca Hackett — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 08:18:00 +0000

In reply to Arjay. THANK YOU!!!!!

By: Lisa Parker

Lisa Parker — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 17:37:00 +0000

In reply to Arjay.

OMG – for the longest time I have had issues with this error – NOTHING worked to fix it – your fix is the BOMB! You are definitely my new hero

By: Scott DeLuzio

Scott DeLuzio — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 17:09:00 +0000

In reply to Agii.

I wasn’t aware that the automatic calculation would cause the too many different cell formats error. Perhaps the reason is due to some sort of conditional formatting that is set in your worksheet? For example if a cell value is greater than another cell it’s background is changed to another color? If this is happening in your sheet the automatic calculation could create the problem, although when you manually calculate the sheet I would imagine that this would eventually happen anyway.

Your best bet is to reduce the number of formats in your spreadsheet to begin with so that a handful of cells changing formats won’t be a big deal.

To turn off automatic calculations though you can go to the Calculation group on the Formulas tab and select Manual from the Calculation Options menu. You may need to repeat this on other workbooks as well since the default setting is Automatic.

By: Agii

Agii — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 10:08:00 +0000

Hello, for me this error is coming if excel set itself for automatic calculation.
So I am going to the Formulas tab > Calculation options > Automatic except data table, and I am selecting it. Save the workbook and the “Too many different cell formats” error is solved. So in this case no formatting changes needed everything can stay as it was.

I have the same for “select visible cells” errors. If excel starts to overwrite/copy hidden cells then I change the calculation type from “Automatic” to back “Automatic except data table” and then the error stops.

Now I just would like to know why is “Automatic” calculation pops up sometimes and how can it disable it permanently.

By: Noel

Noel — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 22:59:00 +0000

In reply to Arjay. You are my hero. THIS FIXES THE ISSUE!!!!

By: Arjay

Arjay — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 17:25:00 +0000

I’ve had this problem for months at work and no one has been able to help me with it. After opening spreadsheets, pasting data, and not being able to make changes to fonts, or not even being able to paste (even as plain text) it really got on my nerves. So today I went into a new spreadsheet, dumped in some problematic text which still gave me the message ‘Too Many Different Cell Formats’, and played around. Under Home tab > Conditional Formatting, I found Clear Rules > Clear Rules from Selected Cells and Clear Rules from Entire Sheet.

I chose …Entire Sheet.
Saved my spreadsheet.
Closed it.
Went back into it.
Highlighted the whole sheet.
Selected Arial font, size 10.

It worked!!!! Simple yet satisfying. I will see if it works on other spreadsheets that I have been having issues with.
Wanted to share this as it was simple, and might work for some.

By: kris

kris — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 18:22:41 +0000

Sorry. fixed typo to ‘Clear Formats’:
In excel 2010: If retaining all formats is not essential then use ‘Clear Formats’ option under the home tab. Save and close the file. After re-opening the file I was able to use new formatting. If there are multiple tabs use shift option to select all sheets and clear formats.