Formatting error in excel

Frequently encountering too many different cell formats error in Excel? But don’t have any idea on how to fix this?

Well, you can try quick fixes like clearing the cell’s formatting, adding one standard font style to all the cells, and removing filled colors in a cell, etc. to fix too many different cell formats errors.

Like this, there are many more fixes available to resolve too many different cell formats error. But to explore all this, you need to go through this post completely.

The main reason behind the occurrence of such error is when the Excel workbook contains approximately 4,000 or higher combinations cell format in Excel 2003. Or 64,000 different combinations in Excel 2007 and its later versions.

This Combination is known as a unique set of formatting elements that are applicable to all your cell in Excel. This combination contains all font formatting e.g.: typeface, font size, italic bold, underline, cell patterns, number formatting, alignment, and cell protection. When the cell formatting limits exceed its fixed limit then such error occurs.

Common causes of exceeding the cell formatting limits include the following:

• When two or more cells are having the formatting pattern then they use a single formatting combination.
• If there is any difference in formatting between the cells, every cell makes use of a different combination.
• Data pasted from other sources, such as the Internet
• In Excel, counts of style may increase each time when you perform copy operations in different of your workbooks. This issue arises due to the copied custom styles.
• File corruption
• Custom cell format is often imported with data from external sources. These custom styles multiply themselves very quickly and cause errors or become corrupt.

Well, these are the common causes behind getting the error too many different cell formats and to fix it follow the manual solutions given below.

However, if you are not able to fix it with a manual solution then make use of the automatic MS Excel Repair tool to fix the error easily.

How To Fix Excel Too Many Different Cell Formats Error?

To fix this error, make use of the best-suited method for your case.

1. Install Latest Excel Update
2. Copy Custom Styles Between Workbooks
3. Apply Simple Formatting In Workbook
4. Repair Spreadsheet With Excel Repair Software
5. Open Excel File With Alternative Options
6. Clear all the spreadsheet’s cell formatting
7. Apply Standard Font Style To Entire Cells
8. Use Clean Excess Cell Formatting Option

1# Install Latest Excel Update

To prevent built-in styles to get duplicated at the time of copying a workbook, make sure that you are using the latest patches of Excel updates or your system is installed with the latest Excel update.

2# Copy Custom Styles Between Workbooks

You can also read the following Knowledge Base articles which will guide you to prevent.

Copying custom styles between workbooks in one place of Excel sheet while moving or copying a worksheet.

Note: This article needs to add and install the registry key.

2553085 Unused styles are copied from one workbook to another workbook in Excel 2007

2598127 Unused styles are copied from one workbook to another in Excel 2010

3# Apply Simple Formatting In Workbook

You need to simplify the formatting of your workbooks. To do so follow these mentioned guidelines to simplify formatting:

• Use a standard font: Use the same font for all the cells, you can minimize the formatting combinations.
• If you use the border in your worksheet, use them consistently.

Note: The borders between cells overlap, such as if you put a border on the right sections of the cells. You don’t need to keep the border on the left portion of an adjacent cell.

If you are applying patterns on the cell then remove it. Don’t do this, open the format cells dialog box, tap to the patterns tab and then click No color.

• Use styles to give elegant look to your formatting in the entire of your workbook.

Note: after you simplify and standardize the formatting in the workbook, save, close,  and again reopen it right the application of cell formatting.

4# Repair Spreadsheet With Excel Repair Software

Too many cell format errors also pop up when you are trying to open a corrupted Excel file.

You can easily repair corrupted Excel spreadsheets with Excel Repair software.

If none of the above given manual methods help you to fix excel too many different cell formats errors, then you can opt for the third-party professional recommended MS Excel Repair Tool. It is the best tool that is purposely designed to fix any type of corruption that occurs in the excel file. This tool mainly targets fixing corrupted or damaged .xls files.

So, by using this software, you can easily troubleshoot your corrupted Excel file issue and also restore all your worksheet data safely. This includes cell comments, charts, worksheet properties, and other related data. The corrupted excel file can be restored to a new blank Excel file.

* Free version of the product only previews recoverable data.

Steps to Utilize MS Excel Repair Tool:

5# Open Excel File With Alternative Options

Another alternative that you can try is opening your Excel file using some alternative software.

By doing this, you will be able to open and apply formatting in your Excel spreadsheet without any issue.

Well, there is any software available using which you can open Excel file without Excel. Just check out the given post link, to know about those alternative options.

6# Clear All The Spreadsheet’s Cell Formatting

If this too many cell formats error arising due to previously applied formatting then you should clear all those formatting first and then re-apply it.

• In your Excel spreadsheet, hit the Ctrl + A button from your keyboard to select entire cells.
• Go to the Home tab first and then from the editing group choose the clear button.
• After pressing the clear button, the list of submenu gets open. From which you have to choose Clear Formats option.

• Now you can apply new formatting to your spreadsheet data.

7# Apply Standard Font Style To Entire Cells

Clearing the whole formatting of the sheet is a slightly drastic thing to do. If you want to retain some Excel formatting then minimize the number of applied cell formatting by keeping only the unique one is the best option.

• In your Excel spreadsheet, hit the Ctrl + A button from your keyboard to select entire cells.
• After that go to the Home tab and then from the Font group choose the font style.

• Hit the Fill Color icon, this will open the color palette.
• Choose No Fill option for removing all the filled colors of your spreadsheet.

• Now all spreadsheet cells don’t have any fill color formatting and have the same font style.

8# Use Clean Excess Cell Formatting Option

Another option that you can try to fix too many cell formats error in excel is by using the option of cleaning Excess Cell Formatting.

This option is available on the Inquire tab of Office Professional Plus 2013 and Microsoft Office 365.

 If you are unable to find this option in your excel version then follow these steps to enable the Inquire add-in.

• Hit the File tab and then from the drop-down menu list choose the Options. This will open Excel Options window.

• Tap the Add-ins tab which is present on the left panel of the Excel Options window.

• Hit the arrow sign present across the Manage button and then from the drop-down choose COM Add-ins. Now press the go button.

• From the opened COM Add-Ins window choose Inquire add-in, and then tap the OK button.

• You will see that Inquire tab is now starting to appear on your screen.
• Tap to the Clean Excess Cell Formatting button present on the Inquire tab.

• Choose to clean the entire worksheet of the spreadsheet. Thereafter tap to the Yes option for saving up entire spreadsheet changes.

Remember: Even a blank cell of the spreadsheet also contains formatting. So here are some easy tricks to clean data in Excel spreadsheet.

Other Problems Associated With This Too Many Different Cell Formats Error?

In Microsoft Office Excel, when you make any cell formatting or set cells range, you will get the following error message:

Too many different cell formats.

In this case, you need to clear some of the formatting to avoid computing the workbook.

Well, in some cases the error appears like this:

Excel found unreadable content in the file

Following scenarios are associated with styles:

• After opening the file suddenly you see all the formatting that you have done is actually missing.
• The file size is increased after you copy or paste between workbooks.
• When you paste a text, you will encounter the following error messages:

Microsoft Excel can’t paste data

In this scenario, none of the paste and Ctrl+V keyboard shortcuts produce any result although the clipboard is not empty.

Conclusion:

We have tried our best to provide complete information about Excel too many different cell formats error. You can make use of it and get rid of the error easily.

Good Luck!!!  

A formatting issue in Excel may affect fonts, charts, shading, colors, borders, number formats, file formats, cell formats, hyperlink formats, and several other elements. For each of these different Excel format issues — Font Type and Size changed, Chart formatting, Conditional Formatting Rules, Text formatted to Number, Number formatted to Text or Date, Dates formatted to Numbers, etc. there are specific solutions.

A few common Excel formatting issues and how to fix them

1. Date Format issue in Excel:

The typed-in date changes to a number, text, another format of date (for example, MM/DD/YYYY may change to DD/MM/YYYY), or any other format that Excel does not recognize.

An example of Excel Date Format issue is as follows:

A user enters or types a Date — September 6 in a cell of Excel file. However, on pressing the ‘Enter’ key the value of the cell converts to a ‘Number.’

This implies that the cell’s number format is not in sync with what the user is trying to achieve. The cell is set to the Number format, which converts the input to a numerical value.

Solution: Right-click the cell containing the Date, select ‘Format Cells’, click ‘Date’ present under Number à Category and finally choose a Date format of choice (Example: DD/MM/YYYY format).

Note – This is valid for older versions of Excel.

In Excel 2007 and above versions; click a cell, next click the drop-down arrow in the Number section of the Home tab. In doing so, a list of the Number format appears, along with the data represented in each of the formats.

1. Number Format Issue and how to fix it

The Number format issue in Excel is an issue wherein a Number is formatted or changed to Text, Date, or any other format that is not recognized by Excel.

Solution: In such cases, users can use Error Checking or Paste Special as fixes.

1. Formatting issues in font type, size, color, and conditional formatting:

These generally occur in Excel if users open Excel files on a system other than where those were created, or if the new system runs an older Office/Excel version.

Solution: Users should make sure they save the Excel files in the native and widely accepted Excel 2007/2010 format, and not in the older Excel 97-2003 format. These are the options that users get while saving the Excel file using ‘Save As’ feature.

Users can also try to fix the Excel formatting issue by transferring all data from the current spreadsheet or workbook to a new and usable Excel workbook.

1. Excel XLS or XLSX file corruption:

In such situations, the Excel files need to be repaired which can be done by using either the inbuilt ‘Open or Repair’ utility or an Excel file repair software such as Stellar Repair for Excel.

The software repairs the damaged Excel (XLS or XLSX) file in 3 quick and easy steps: Select, Scan, and Save. You can save the repaired file either at the default or desired location.

Conclusion

Despite being an amazing application that allows users to create and process complex data in workbooks. Microsoft Excel is not free from concerns including the ones that arise due to formatting issues. This is true for all Excel versions, be it the latest Excel 2016 or other lower versions. Therefore, the need to employ the appropriate fixes whenever required.

In addition, the use of an advanced Excel repair tool is recommended to fix issues that appear due to Excel file corruption. An advanced software such as Stellar Repair for Excel recovers the lost formatting from corrupt Excel files. It offers an intuitive interface to repair Font formatting, Chart Formatting, Conditional formatting rules and more while preserving the data format at the time of restoring the Excel files.

Using the Clean excess cell formatting might eliminate the error

by Matthew Adams

Matthew is a freelancer who has produced a variety of articles on various topics related to technology. His main focus is the Windows OS and all the things… read more

Updated on January 5, 2023

Reviewed by
Alex Serban

After moving away from the corporate work-style, Alex has found rewards in a lifestyle of constant analysis, team coordination and pestering his colleagues. Holding an MCSA Windows Server… read more

The Too many different cell formats error message is one that can pop up for some Microsoft Excel users when they try to add formatting to a spreadsheet cell (or cell range).

Or the error message might pop up when you try to copy cells and data from another spreadsheet file or source into a sheet.

Consequently, Excel users can’t apply further formatting to the spreadsheet when that error message pops up.

The cell formats error occurs when an Excel file reaches the maximum number of cell format combinations.

Excel 2003 users can add a maximum of 4,000 unique cell formatting combinations to a spreadsheet. You can apply 64,000 unique cell format combinations in later Excel versions.

Those might be large figures, but remember that unique formatting counts any kind of cell formatting for fonts, borders, alignment, numbers, fill colors, etc. So a large spreadsheet might reach the max formatting amount.

Does the Too many different cell formats error message pop up for one, or more, of your Excel spreadsheets? If so, check out the “cell formats” error fixes below.

In this article

• How do I fix common Excel cell format errors?
• 1. Clear all the spreadsheet’s cell formatting
• 2. Repair the Spreadsheet With Stellar Repair for Excel
• 3. Add a standard font to all cells and remove fill colors
• 4. Select the Clean Excess Cell Formatting option
• 5. Check out the Style Reduction Tool for Microsoft Excel
• 6. Open the file in alternative spreadsheet software

How do I fix common Excel cell format errors?

1. Clear all the spreadsheet’s cell formatting

• Press the Ctrl + A hotkey to select all the cells in the spreadsheet.
• Select the Home tab shown directly below.

Press the Clear button to open the submenu in the snapshot directly below.

• Then select the Clear Formats option. Thereafter, you can apply new formatting to the spreadsheet.

2. Repair the Spreadsheet With Stellar Repair for Excel

An Excel file might also be corrupted if the cell formats error message pops up when you try to open it. You can fix corrupted Excel spreadsheets with the Stellar Repair for Excel software for Windows.

You can also try out a demo version of the software by clicking Free Download.

When you’ve installed and opened the software, you can click Select File to select the spreadsheet that might be corrupted.

Click Scan to start the scanning. Thereafter, you’ll see a preview of the corrupted file; and can press the Repair button to fix it.

So that’s how you can fix the Too many different cell formats error. Reducing unique cell formatting in spreadsheets will certainly resolve the issue when you can edit the sheets.

If you can’t open the file in Excel, check out the Style reduction tool and Stellar Repair for Excel software, or try editing the spreadsheet with an alternative application.

⇒ Get Stellar Repair for Excel

3. Add a standard font to all cells and remove fill colors

• First, press the Ctrl + A keyboard shortcut to select all spreadsheet cells.
• Then click the font menu on the Home tab to select a new font for all the cells.

• Click the Fill Color button to open the palette as in the snapshot directly below.

• Select the No Fill option to remove all fill colors from the spreadsheet. Then all the spreadsheet cells will have the same font and will not include any fill color formatting.

Clearing all a sheet’s formatting, however, might be a slightly drastic fix. If you prefer to retain some of the formatting in the spreadsheet, reducing the amount of unique cell formatting is a better fix.

One of the best ways to do that is to add a standardized font to the spreadsheet so that all the cells have the same font.

In addition, removing all separate fill colors in an Excel sheet might also reduce the amount of unique cell formatting.

4. Select the Clean Excess Cell Formatting option

• Click the File tab and select Options to open the Excel Options window.

• Click Add-ins on the left of the Excel Options window.
• Then click the Manage drop-down menu to select COM Add-ins.
• Select the Inquire check box in the COM Add-ins window, and then press the OK button.
• Thereafter, you can select an Inquire tab on the Excel window.
• Click the Clean Excess Cell Formatting button on the Inquire tab.
• Select to clean all worksheets in the spreadsheet. Thereafter, click Yes to save the spreadsheet changes.

Remember that blank Excel spreadsheet cells can also include formatting.

For example, a column will include the same font formatting in blank cells and those with data in them if you apply the same font to the whole column.

Thus, blank cells that aren’t in use can also increase the number of uniquely formatted cells.

As such, removing excess formatting from a spreadsheet is another potential resolution for the “cell formats” error.

You can do that quickly with the Inquire add-on’s Excess Cell Formatting option. Inquire is an add-on you can utilize in Excel 2013 and more recent versions.

5. Check out the Style Reduction Tool for Microsoft Excel

The Too many different cell formats error message might pop up when some users try to open a spreadsheet file.

Consequently, the Excel spreadsheet file doesn’t open; and the users can’t get rid of cell formatting as outlined above. In such circumstances, the Style reduction tool for Excel might be worth noting.

That’s a utility that fixes the cell formats error by reducing duplicate formatting styles.

Click the Download button to save the software to a folder. Then open the Style reduction tool window shown directly below, and click the File button to select the spreadsheet to fix.

Press the Analyze button to scan for duplicate styles, and click Fix to remove the formatting.

6. Open the file in alternative spreadsheet software

Alternatively, you could try opening the Excel file in alternative software. Then you might be able to open and apply more formatting to the spreadsheet in the alternative application without any issues.

There is numerous spreadsheet software that also supports the Excel file format. LibreOffice Calc is one application that you can open Excel files in, and you can also download that office suite.

Use Conditional Formatting in Excel with Formulas to Highlight Errors, Blanks and Duplicates

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated April 7, 2021

Applies to: Microsoft^® Excel^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 365 (Windows)

Conditional formatting is a great tool in Excel and if you combine it with formulas, you can do some amazing things. In this article, we’ll use some simple examples to show the power of conditional formatting.

Conditional Formatting appears on the Home tab in the Ribbon in the Styles group.

You can apply conditional formatting using a formula and a new rule. Below is a sample of a rule with a formula:

Recommended article: 15 Microsoft Excel Keyboard Shortcuts to Speed Up Formatting

Do you want to learn more about Excel? Check out our virtual classroom or live classroom Excel courses >

Highlighting errors using conditional formatting

You can use conditional formatting to highlight errors in a range of cells.

In example below, there are errors in column C:

To highlight the errors using conditional formatting:

1. Select the range of cells in a column where some of the cells contain errors. In this example, select C2 to C10 .
2. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon and select Conditional Formatting in the Styles group. A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select New Rule from the drop-down menu. A dialog box appears.
4. Click Use a formula to determine which cells to format. In the formula box, enter =ISERROR(active cell reference). In this example, enter =ISERROR(C2). Enter the formula for the first cell in the range. Excel uses relative referencing by default so the formula will be copied down and adjusted for the remaining cells.
5. Click Format. A dialog box appears.
6. Click the Fill tab and select a light fill.
7. Click OK twice.

Highlighting blanks using conditional formatting

You can use conditional formatting to highlight blanks in a range of cells.

In the example below, there are blanks in column C:

To highlight the blanks using conditional formatting:

1. Select the range of cells in the column where some of the cells contain blanks. In this example, select C2 to C10.
2. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon and select Conditional Formatting in the Styles group. A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select New Rule from the menu. A dialog box appears.
4. Click Use a formula to determine which cells to format. In the formula box, enter =ISBLANK(active cell reference). In this example, enter =ISBLANK(C2). Enter the formula for the first cell in the range. Excel uses relative referencing by default so the formula will be copied down and adjusted for the remaining cells.
5. Click Format. A dialog box appears.
6. Click the Fill tab and select a light fill.
7. Click OK twice.

Highlighting duplicates using conditional formatting

You can also use conditional formatting to highlight duplicates in a range of cells.

In the example below, there are duplicates in column A:

To apply conditional formatting to highlight the duplicates:

1. Select the range of cells in the column where some of the cells contain duplicates. In this example, select A2 to A10.
2. Click the Home tab in the Ribbon and select Conditional Formatting in the Styles group. A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select New Rule from the menu. A dialog box appears.
4. Click Use a formula to determine which cells to format. In the formula box, enter =COUNTIF(absolute range,cell containing criteria)>1. In this example, enter =COUNTIF($A$2:$A$10,A2)>1. Enter the formula for the range of cells using absolute referencing (since this range should not change) and for the cell holding the criteria using relative referencing and refer to the active cell. Excel will then copy the formula down and adjust for the remaining cells.
5. Click Format. A dialog box appears.
6. Click the Fill tab and select a light fill.
7. Click OK twice.

These are just a few examples of conditional formatting with formulas. You can use all kinds of other formulas in rules to format cells.

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