Circular references (or circularities) can cause major problems in spreadsheets. A spreadsheet containing a circular reference must be “calculated” iteratively. This greatly increases recalculation time, and can also lead to other problems. For example, sometimes no correct solution can be found. Hence circular references are often considered undesirable.

Tracking down a circular reference in a large spreadsheet can be quite difficult. Spreadsheet Advantage’s Circularity Finder does this for you. You simply give it a spreadsheet to analyze and it generates a list of its circular references.

Some circular references only appear when a particular input is set to a certain value (for example, when there is an IF function determining which cells are referred to), and hence they may not be detected during testing of a spreadsheet. An advantage of the Circularity Finder tool is that it detects and lists these “potential” circular references as well.

Below is an example of a report generated by the Circularity Finder, listing five circular references: