How-to Turn Off Cell Background Error Checking with VBA or without VBA

Written by Jordan Goldmeier

Excel VBA & Macros

When I’m all done with my Excel application, I’ll usually want to flip off background error checking – that is, I’ll tell Excel to stop showing those little green triangles that appear in cells.

Why Disable Error Checking?

For a polished, professional workbook, those green triangles can detract from the clean look you’re going for. By disabling error checking, you can prevent Excel from unnecessarily second-guessing your work.

Don’t get me wrong, those little green alerts can be useful – but they are rarely so in a finished product where I know my layout and formulas are correct. I just want to tell Excel, “thanks for the help, but stop annoying me already!” Indeed, these green alerts appeared on other computer screens when users opened my Periodic Table of elements file, which I found annoying.

How-to Turn Off Cell Background Error Checking with VBA

Excel VBA Code to Ignore Error in Cell

The problem is that while I can tell those green triangles to go away on my instance Excel by going into Excel Options (or simply by clicking “ignore”), that won’t fix the problem when my file is loaded onto other computers. The way around this is some VBA and the workbook open and close events. 

So, in my ThisWorkbook object in the VBA window, I wrote this:

Option Explicit

Private Sub Workbook_Open()

    Application.ErrorCheckingOptions.BackgroundChecking = False

End Sub

Private Sub Workbook_BeforeClose(Cancel As Boolean)

    Application.ErrorCheckingOptions.BackgroundChecking = True

End Sub

There are actually several types of background error checking that go on in a workbook.

How to Disable Error Checking in Excel with VBA

Excel allows you to disable these separate error checks by themselves if don’t want to disable everything. Specifically, you can modify background checking options for empty cell references, error calculations, inconsistent formulas, and omitted cells, among others. For example, you might simply write:

Application.ErrorCheckingOptions.OmittedCells = False

If you only want Excel to stop monitoring for formula patterns that appear to omit cells that Excel thinks should be included in the formula. This will work so long as BackgroundChecking is still True. If you set BackgroundChecking to False like in the example above, Excel will cease all attempts to second guess your work (which can make your life easier, sometimes). 

To read more, see: The ErrorCheckingOptions Object

How to Disable Error Checking in Excel Without VBA

Excel’s green error triangles can be helpful when catching mistakes, but they often feel more like an annoyance—especially when you’re confident your formulas and layout are correct. Fortunately, you can disable error checking without resorting to VBA. Here’s how to do it.

Turn Off Error Checking the Easy Way

1 – Open Excel Options

The first step is to access the settings that control error checking:

  1. Go to the File tab.
  2. Click Options to open the Excel Options dialog box.

2 – Navigate to Error Checking Settings

  1. In the Excel Options window, select Formulas from the menu on the left.
  2. Scroll down to the Error Checking section.

3 – Disable Background Error Checking

  1. Uncheck the box for Enable background error checking.
  2. This will stop Excel from displaying those pesky green triangles across all cells in the workbook.

Bonus: Disable Specific Error Types

If you don’t want to turn off all error checking, you can disable specific types instead:

  1. Stay in the Formulas section of Excel Options.
  2. Click the Error Checking Rules button.
  3. Uncheck the rules you want to disable (e.g., “Formulas that omit cells in a region” or “Inconsistent calculated column formula in tables”).

This way, Excel will still alert you to critical issues while ignoring the less relevant ones.

No VBA needed—just a few clicks, and you’re good to go. If you change your mind, you can always re-enable error checking by following the same steps.

Happy Excel-ing!

Jordan Goldmeier
Latest posts by Jordan Goldmeier (see all)

Related articles

Data Parsing in Excel Using LEN and SUBSTITUTE function

Excel VBA: Disable Pop up Messages (Remove Auto Syntax Popup)

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.