FormulaLogic
Wrap a formula with a friendly fallback
Catch any formula error and show a clean message or a blank instead of #N/A, #DIV/0!, or #REF! appearing in front of people.
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Your formula
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,Products!A:C,3,FALSE), "Not found")
Works in both Excel and Google Sheets unless the fine print below says otherwise.
Why it's built this way
- →IFERROR takes only two arguments — the formula, and what to show if it fails — replacing the older IF(ISERROR(formula), fallback, formula) pattern that typed the formula twice and evaluated it twice.
- →It catches every error type in one wrapper: #N/A, #DIV/0!, #VALUE! and #REF! all fall through to the same fallback, so one wrapper covers a lookup, a division, and a text formula alike.
The fine print
- →It isn't selective: a genuine typo in a range or a broken reference hides behind the same friendly message as a normal missing-value case. Use it on formulas whose failure mode is already known and expected.
- →For a lookup where the only error worth catching is a not-found result, IFNA is narrower — it lets other error types, like a bad range, keep surfacing instead of being swallowed.
- →Works identically in Excel and Google Sheets.