BusinessObjects Special Topics #MULTIVALUE and #DIV/0 Errors

#MULTIVALUE and #DIV/0 Errors

#MULTIVALUE and #DIV/0 Errors

Here are two common BusinessObjects computation errors and their causes.

Error Cause Fix

#MULTIVALUE You put a variable that could
have multiple values in a cell
that only allows a single
value (e.g., the master
section of a master/detail
report).
#DIV/0 Your formula results in a
division by zero in a
particular cell.
Use Min or Max function,
which by definition displays a
single value.
Use an If Then Else
statement to specify how to
handle the error message.

#MULTIVALUE Example
You can download the sample report, errors.rep.
In this example, you want have a query that returns a single value for year. You want to display the
year in the header of your report. You create this formula:
=<Year>

The result:

The problem: A single cell by definition can only display a single value of a variable. Business
Objects thinks there could be more than one value for <Year>, even though this query always returns a
single value. So it displays the #MULTIVALUE error.
The fix: You use the maximum function to create this formula:
=Max(<Year>)
The revised formula displays properly:

The fix works in this case because your query only returns one value for <Year>. If your variable has
more than one value, only the maximum value will display.

3/20/2003 1-1
BusinessObjects Special Topics #MULTIVALUE and #DIV/0 Errors

#DIV/0 Example
You can download the sample BusinessObjects report, div_zero_error.rep.
In this example, you create a variable, <average price>, with the following formula:
=<Sales revenue>/<Quantity sold>
The result:

The problem:
<Quantity sold> contains some zero values, so the #DIV/0 error message returns in those rows.
The fix:
Replace the <average price> column with a variable containing an IF THEN ELSE statement and the
IsError() function (which checks to see if an error message has been returned):
= If IsError(<average price>) Then "N/A" Else FormatNumber(<average price> ,"$0.00")
Note: Because “N/A” is a character string and <average price> is numeric data, we use the
FormatNumber() function to convert <average price> to a character string. Otherwise, we get the
“Incorrect data type” error message.
The result:

3/20/2003 1-2