Excel Adding @ to Formulas

Question

For my company, I use a program (don't know what programming language) which creates workbooks that we review, convert to PDFs, then send to clients. These workbooks have more than sixty tabs, and each is generated from a "template", a blank version of what the sheet should look like which is populated with info from the program.

The problem is as follows. Many cells in the template have a formula which resembles this:

=ROUND(STDEV(IF(NOT(ISERROR(_data!J2:J13)),_data!J2:J13)),5)

Which Microsoft Excel changes to this at the time the workbook is generated:

=ROUND(STDEV(IF(NOT(ISERROR(@_data!J2:J13)),_data!J2:J13)),5)

This prevents my formula from functioning, and causes it to return a #DIV/0 error. I could correct it manually using Find & Replace, but I would rather Excel just not "correct" my perfectly-functioning formulas into error-producing non-functioning formulas.

How can I prevent Excel from adding the "@" operator so that my formulas work again?

More info: I know it isn't a problem with my company's program, since updates have to be installed manually and I did not update it, and this has never previously been an issue.

Answer 1

Hi J Mills,

First, my pleasure to assist you.

As per your description, please don’t worry, we can work together to narrow down and resolve the situation.

 May I know does issue happened do specific Excel workbook document file? If the issue only happens to a specific workbook file, the file may be corrupted. In this scenario, please copy/paste content to a new created Excel file, then to check the outcomes.

Also, if possible could you please create a new Excel file (for test purpose) and check if you meet same behavior or not.

Meanwhile, could you please share a copy of your problematic Excel file here(you may need to upload into OneDrive location and share a link here) so that I can look from my side, and I will check this behavior and verify the result with you.

In the meantime, to confirm whether this is a bug in a specific version, please provide us the version information. To check version: Open Excel>File>Account>Product Information and capture a full screenshot and share here (Please mask your private message for protecting your private message) and we will be tested on that version and verify the result with you.

I appreciate your understanding and stay safe!!

Best regards

Waqas Muhammad