I’m getting a warning in Excel that says “There are one or more circular references where a formula refers to its own cell…“. Why is this and is there a fix?
While you can safely add old transactions at the bottom (after new transactions), before you tell Excel to sort on the Date column (oldest to newest), make sure that the “Starting Balance” row has a date that is older than anything else in that register. You could safely give that starting balance entry a really old date — it won’t hurt anything if you do. After updating the date on the starting balance row, re-sort your transactions on the Date column (oldest to newest). Note: It’s critical that this special row is always the first entry as otherwise you’ll get an error from Excel about a “circular reference error”.
Note: the latest version of the Excel Checkbook has a button to Sort on Date. This macro will check and warn you if your starting balance row doesn’t have the oldest date in the register.