Home → Troubleshooting → @RISK for Excel: Other Issues → "Type mismatch" Prevents Distribution Fitting
Applies to: @RISK 7.0.0–7.5.0, Professional and Industrial Editions
I'm trying to fit distributions to my data, but as soon as I click Distribution Fitting » Fit, I get this error popup:
Type mismatch
The dialog box never appears.
This is a known problem with the @RISK releases mentioned above, but it's rare: only two customers have reported it as of 2017-02-13, when this article as written.
The issue is that somehow—we don't know how—the list of distributions to fit in the System Registry has been changed to the eight characters <<NULL>>. The fitting dialog reads this invalid value and doesn't know what to do with it. This problem was first reported after 7.5.0 was released, and was corrected in 7.5.1.
To resolve the problem, do any one of the following:
Solution 1: If you have current maintenance, upgrade to the current version of @RISK or the DecisionTools Suite.
Solution 2: With @RISK not running, open REGEDIT and navigate to this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Palisade\@RISK for Excel\7.0\Application Settings\Fitting Defaults
In the right-hand panel, double-click Distributions and change it to the string{Default}
Include the curly braces around the word Default. Close REGEDIT and run @RISK.
Solution 3: In the GUI of @RISK, click Utilities » Application Settings » Fitting Defaults. To the right of Distributions to Fit, you'll see the word Custom. Click on that word and tap the Delete key; Custom will change to Automatic. Click OK, answer the confirming prompt if there is one, and either close Excel or shut down @RISK. (Application settings aren't written to the Registry until @RISK shuts down.)
Last edited: 2017-02-13