I am guessing you are getting the null exception on the strGetCell.toUpperCase() line?
I know of no way to 'turn it off' but you can check for it to avoid the problem and move on to the next iteration.
if(strGetCell != null){
do stuff;
}
try/catch blocks will catch the error so that the system can deal with it, but the code that was executing (your for loop) will stop running once the error is thrown.
you just end up with a lot of null checks in java
