In this Excel tutorial, we will take a look at some common causes of why Excel shows hashtags instead of dates and how to correct this. Irrespective of the type of value in the cell, the most common cause for the hashtag error is a smaller cell width. Values with date formats require the cell to be wide enough to show the whole value.
Irrespective of the type of value in the cell, the most common cause for the hashtag error is a smaller cell width. Values with date formats require the cell to be wide enough to show the whole value. If it isn’t then you get a bunch of hashtags indicating that Excel cannot show you the whole thing. Fortunately, this is not a very serious problem.
A query we ran across in our research was “Why is my cell showing a hash symbol in Excel?”.
Sometimes when the content of a cell is longer than what the column can display, it ends up showing the #### (hash symbols). All the solutions for this issue would involve fitting the content of the cell within it.
However, some formats (e. g. dates and times) require the cell to be wide enough to display the entire value. If the cell is not wide enough, it will display a row of hashes. This problem is easily solved, by altering the cell width.
What is hashtag error and how to fix it?
Let’s understand how this error occurred and how to fix them with some examples. The most basic reason for the hashtag error is when the formula used in the cell returns a decimal number which cannot fit in the cell width. Generally Excel function returns a decimal number and lack of space for the cell value shows the ###### error.
If the Long Date format was the reason for the appearance of hashtags, the above steps should get rid of the error and display the shortened version of the date. Another reason for the hashtag error could be the presence of a negative number in the date. This might happen accidentally or because a formula resulted in a negative number.