I'm using Excel 2010 with Win 7 64 Pro. I have a few big spreadsheet (for me) in an XLSM file, which I use to count occurrences of texts pattern. The text is usually imported form a text file (plain text) created from a PDF file. I'm using "COUNTIF" and "INDIRECT" within it. It was all working fine up to today.

As it happens, the formulas are not working anymore. I've tried everything obvious: automatic calculation on/off, calculate now, put text as "general" instead of "text", and even replacing "=" by "=". Nothing is working. Well, strangely, I managed to have the formulas work on one column (out of 7) on one spreadsheet (out of 4). I don't see any difference between the one working and the one not working. The only thing I could link to the one working is that I did some panic copy/paste and suddenly the formulas on the column worked (can't remember what I did, but it seemed that I pasted outside the usual place where the PDF/text import used to be, and then move it back; not 100% sure though). Maybe something has changed with the way Adobe exports to plain text (I seem to have lost the table format, so I had to use different methods to get the text imported into Excel). However, plain text is plain text, why would this cause a problem?

Another change I've noticed is that, a few days ago, I installed some Office updates (through Windows update), as they were advised (security problem). Could that be the problem? I did reboot after installation but not since the Excel problem appeared. The updates were KB2760410 to KB2598242 (~30 installed, not all for security). Should I uninstall all?

Can anyone help? I'm desperate at this stage.

Hi,

It seems that there are many reasons can cause this issue.

Refer to the following link to check:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_xp-excel/excel-formulas-not-working-checked-the-automatic/15c7e4e2-e830-47ed-910c-b22d1f34c726

Also, try to re-create a workbook then import the data to check the issue.

Hi,

Thanks for the answer. I'll check the link and also do some import test. I hope I'll get somewhere.

I did some import tests and it turned out that, somehow, the conversion from PDF added a space at the end of each string in the table, so the pattern could not be recognised anymore with my "COUNTIF" functions.

It's sorted now, thanks for your time.