They indicate that an “overflow” condition has occurred and that your value cannot be displayed as you want. This is particularly common when displaying dates using a format that requires more horizontal space.
Why are my hashtags not showing up in Excel?
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.
Another query we ran across in our research was “Why do my numbers turn into hashtags in excel?”.
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.
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.
Why does excel display a string of “ #” symbols?
If Excel continues to display a string of # symbols, no matter how wide you make your column, it is likely that Excel is attempting to display the contents of the cell as a date or time, but the cell contains an invalid date or time value.
This is happening because there is more information in the cell than can be displayed with the cell’s current width. This issue can be resolved by expanding the width of the cell so that it is wide enough to display all of the numbers.
Another common query is “How do you show numbers instead of symbols in Excel 2010?”.
Show Numbers Instead of ###### In Excel 2010 1 ##### symbols that you want to replace with your numerical values. 2 Position your cursor on the right border of the column heading at the top of the sheet. 3 Double-click your mouse to expand the column. The cell that previously contained the ###### symbols will now display the correct cell value.
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.