How to Turn Off Background Error Checking in Excel 2013

Excel 2013 is constantly scanning for errors in your workbook. This occurs in the background and is the reason that you often see a small green triangle in the corner of a cell.

This feature can be helpful in many situations, but you may have encountered something that requires you to turn it off.

Our guide below will show you how to disable background checking in the background for Excel 2013.

Once you have completed this tutorial, the setting will be turned off for every workbook that you open in the program.

If you only wish to turn it off temporarily, then you will need to follow these steps again to re-enable it after you have completed the action that initially required you to disable it.

Stop Excel from Checking for Errors in the Background

The steps in this guide are going to turn off a feature where Excel checks for errors in the background while you are working on a spreadsheet.

This is a setting for the Excel installation on your computer and will only affect how you use the program. If you send a workbook to someone else and they have background error checking turned on, then the background error checking will still occur.

Step 1: Launch Excel 2013.

Step 2: Click the File tab at the top-left corner of the window.

how to disable background error checking in excel 2013

Step 3: Click the Options button in the left column.

turn off excel background error checking

Step 4: Click the Formulas tab at the left side of the Excel Options window.

stop green triangles in excel 2013

Step 5: Click the box to the left of Enable background error checking to remove the check mark. You can then click the OK button at the bottom of the window to apply your changes.

shut off excel 2013 error checking

Now that you know how to turn off background error checking in Excel 2013, you can stop that feature from running in the background while you are trying to edit your spreadsheets.

Do you have formulas in your spreadsheet that aren’t updating when you edit or change information? This article – https://www.solveyourtech.com/excel-2013-formulas-not-working/ – can show you how to re-enable automatic calculation if it has been switched to manual for your worksheet.

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