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Excel - Find Cells Displaying Hashes ###### - Episode 402

441 views · Published 5 October 2009 · 2:05 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: MrExcel.com · 2009 · Education

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Microsoft Excel Tutorial - Using FIND dialog to find cells displaying hashes or ######.

Welcome back to another MrExcel netcast! In today's episode, we're going to cover a really obscure trick that will save you time and effort when working with large numbers in Excel. Have you ever encountered a data set where the numbers are too large for the cell? Normally, we would just adjust the column width to fit the numbers, but what if we wanted to format those numbers differently? That's where this trick comes in handy.

To select all the cells that are evaluating to pound signs, we're going to use the Find feature. Simply select the cells and go to Edit, Find. Click on the Options button to see more options. Here, we want to look for every occurrence of 5 pound signs and make sure to search within values. Instead of just clicking Find Next, we're going to select Find All. This will give us a list of all the cells that are currently evaluating to pound signs.

Now, here's the cool part. If we hit Ctrl+A, we can select all the items on the right-hand list. This will automatically select all the cells where the numbers are too large for the column. From here, we can easily adjust the decimal format to make the numbers fit. This trick not only saves time, but it also allows for more precise formatting of large numbers.

I found this trick to be really interesting and unusual. Who would have thought that Excel could find the pound signs and allow us to select them all at once? I hope you found this tip helpful and will use it in your future Excel projects. Thanks for watching and don't forget to tune in for more netcasts from MrExcel!"

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Table of Contents:
(00:00) Obscure trick for large numbers
(00:24) Normal method vs. alternative method
(00:40) Selecting cells with pound signs
(00:52) Using Find All and Ctrl+A
(01:18) Adjusting decimal to fit cells
(01:28) Interesting findings
(01:44) Clicking Like really helps the algorithm

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When a number is too large to fit in the width of a column, Excel will display pound signs. Episode 402 shows a unique way to select all of the cells that are currently displaying as pound signs. This trick would seem to be useful for quickly formatting all of the cells that match some certain condition.

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