# Display all errors

**URL:** <https://talk.observablehq.com/t/display-all-errors/10862>\
**Category:** Feedback\
**Created:** [September 18, 2026, 6:48am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/display-all-errors/10862 "2026-09-18T06:48:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![neocarto](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/neocarto/32/6554_2.png) [@neocarto](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/neocarto)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2026, 6:48am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/display-all-errors/10862/1 "2026-09-18T06:48:04Z")

</div>

In the previous version of Observable, every cell would systematically display something. In Observable 2, this is no longer the case.

So, if I type:

```auto
let geo = import("nom:geotoolbox")

```

with an **o** instead of a **p** (a typo I make quite often), I don’t see any error message. I can then spend five minutes trying to figure out why it isn’t working.

Would it be possible to have a mode such as **“display all errors”**? I think this would be really useful for debugging. Then, once everything is working, you could simply turn it off.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mbostock](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/mbostock/32/9_2.png) [@mbostock](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/mbostock)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2026, 3:01pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/display-all-errors/10862/2 "2026-09-18T15:01:39Z")

</div>

The reason that no error isn’t display here is that technically the cell isn’t actually erroring; the cell runs successfully, but the top-level variable `geo` is a rejected promise.

A more idiomatic way to write this cell would be a static import declaration like so:

```auto
import * as geo from "npm:geotoolbox";

```

If you typo `nom:` instead of `npm:`, you’ll see this helpful error in the cell:

```auto
TypeError: Failed to fetch dynamically imported module: nom:geotoolbox

```

In the future, as has been mentioned in other threads ([1](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/issues-arising-from-the-migration-to-observable-2-0/10835/18), [2](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/feedback-on-2-0-gui-focussed-sep-13/10846/3), [3](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/how-to-show-unpinned-cells-observable-2/10832/2)), we plan on implementing automatic inspection of top-level variables. This is similar to the inspector in Old Observable (and for expression cells in New Observable), except that it will support vanilla JavaScript cells that can declare multiple top-level variables. This would show you that `geo` errors even in the case that the cell declaring `geo` itself (trivially) “succeeds” despite the dynamic import failing (and if the import succeeds, you’d be able to inspect the resulting `Module`).