Dermot's Blog

Safer business spreadsheets - a practical approach that works

2008-02-11T08:17:00Z

If, like me, you've worked in organisations where the quality of many spreadsheets is terrible, you'll want to make them safer to reduce business risk caused by errors or misuse.

I believe there is a practical and simple approach which can greatly reduce risk - an approach that is much more human than technical - which came out of research carried out within my previous consulting firm a few years ago, to improve its own spreadsheets.

I'd like to stress that this approach is aimed at ordinary business users, and not professional Excel developers, whose needs can be completely different.

But before laying it out for you, I need to share some of the research findings, because they are important. I've tried to include references where I can, but I can't remember where everything came from. This post is a bit long, but it's an important subject.

Understanding errors

1. Everyone makes mistakes

There is some spreadsheet-specific research. Ray Panko has spent many years working on spreadsheet errors, and the EUSPRIG group has put a lot of effort into how errors occur, and how to prevent them. There has also been a lot of work published on errors in general computer programming, testing programs, etc.

This research shows that everyone makes mistakes, at about the rate of 2-5%, whether they are experts or beginners. I'll say that again - everyone makes mistakes.

What this means in a professional business organisation is that no work can be trusted, so it all needs to be properly checked. This sounds obvious, but it is absolutely crucial to the approach suggested below, because checking is too often given a low priority in time and effort.

As one illustration of how bad checking is in practice, here is a paper on project finance models - you know, for projects like airports and tollways for millions of dollars - spreadsheets that need to be right. Look at the last page for the error rates on a number of actual models - it's scary.

2. Checking is hard

While some errors, like linking to the wrong cell, are relatively common, research has shown that there is a very wide variety of errors in Excel. I think this is the flipside of Excel's flexibility - just as there are many ways to build a spreadsheet, there are many, many ways to go wrong somewhere. What this means for business is that a standard set of checking rules is not going to cover all the bases.

There's worse to come. General research on programming errors shows that checking your own work is ineffective, and even checking by colleagues only picks up about 80% of errors. When I read this, I wondered why we didn't see more disasters in business spreadsheets, and I decided it was probably that most users use common sense to tell them when a spreadsheet gives crazy answers, and this is our main protection. Where we are most at risk is with a spreadsheet which is so complex that we can't estimate the right answer, and so we don't know if it looks wrong.

So, we all make mistakes, Excel gives us many ways to make them, and it's hard to find them all through checking. That's not an encouraging start.

The user

It doesn't get any better when we look at typical users. It may be different for you, but I see new graduates starting work with very poor spreadsheet skills. They are taught the basics (enough to do the work due today, anyway) by the person who was in their job before them, rather than by a senior person with experience and understanding of risk control. To me, this is like getting 18 year olds to teach 17 year olds to drive - do that for a few years and see what you get.

I also remember seeing research that showed that spreadsheet users typically over estimated their skills. It's no wonder we have problems.

This happens even in highly professional firms with excellent training programs. I suspect it's partly because many senior managers can't mentor youngsters because they never had the opportunity to develop strong spreadsheet skills themselves; partly because training programs focus on technical skills and not risk control; and also because spreadsheet issues fall between two stools - managers think they are an IT problem, and IT thinks they are a problem for the business units.

So on top of the difficulties in preventing errors, we often have relatively untrained and over confident users, often working without much guidance.

A practical approach to risk control

So what can we do to improve quality and reduce risk, given these formidable obstacles?

When we started researching, I expected that quality would correlate strongly with high skill levels and discipline, ie that it had a strong technical bias. Expert programmers would produce the best stuff, so what we need most is lots of technical training. Oh, and quite strong controls to keep people in line.

I was very wrong.

Instead, we found that quality came from understanding the truism that spreadsheets don't make mistakes - humans do - and that minimising the opportunity to make mistakes is the most effective way to reduce error. Think of how we try to prevent road accidents. Yes, we train and license drivers to give them technical skills, but skills are not enough. We also provide a number of tools and guides to make driving safer - cats eyes, road signs, traffic lights, speed limits, enforcement and penalties, etc. The authorities also try to change our attitude with ads and publicity campaigns, to prevent us taking risks like speeding and drinking.

In a similar way, spreadsheet users need more than just technical skills. Of course, this is widely recognised, and we discovered several good practice guides which provided lists of things to do (or not to do), but lists are...well, lists. It's hard to really put a list into practice, even if you memorise it or hang it on your wall. We needed something that our users could "get" more intuitively, to help them know what was good and what was bad.

For us, a big clue came from reading the advice of various well known professional software developers, who singled out complexity as the biggest enemy of good code. We thought about this. Clearly, checking is easier if the spreadsheet is simpler.

And then we thought about checking again, and we had the crucial insight that in business you don't build spreadsheets for yourself - you build them for other people - the checker, and other users. These other people are critical, because the real business risk is that they may miss an error or abuse the spreadsheet.

And so we found a single objective that - for us - brought everything together. And here it is:
Spreadsheets should be easy to check, and safe to use

"Easy to check" means anything that helps the checker to understand the design, check the factual details, follow the logic of the more complex parts of the spreadsheet, etc. Examples include

laying out the spreadsheet clearly, logically and simply
using a sensible and mutually agreed colour scheme to highlight key parts
being consistent, eg in the choice of functions, or in sheet layout, to make the spreadsheet feel familiar to the checker. Teams often develop their own accepted ways of doing things, and even if there may sometimes be a better approach, this consistency makes things easier
including explanations in cell notes, textboxes, etc
pasting in extracts of other documents, or hyperlinks, to make it easy for the checker to confirm things
anticipating what the checker will need and providing it as far as possible - eg if you have struggled to build a difficult part of the spreadsheet, the checker will probably also struggle with it, so it is worth spending a little time thinking about how to make it easier
not being "clever" - eg where you have put together an ingenious but complex long formula in a cell, with about 10 functions, it might be much better to break it into several different cells with a clear explanation of each part

What I find interesting is how many of these guidelines are about people rather than about spreadsheets, and they could be summarised as "don't make the checker think" about things that are not central to checking, such as that obscure function you used, or your weird formatting. It's crucial for the checker to focus fully on what matters.

"Safe to use" means protecting the spreadsheet user from error. This includes things like

data validation to check for invalid or strange inputs
VERY clear labelling throughout
removal of any ambiguities
anomaly and/or reasonableness checks to highlight unusual results
protection of key formulae where applicable
including identifying information such as dates or version numbers on results sheets that may be printed
anticipation of ongoing maintenance - eg if you have tables of data that may need to be extended, think about how this can be done and put a note in the spreadsheet, or even better, leave some room for new data. Maintenance can also mean changing formulae, so if you've had to use more than one formula in a column, mark it clearly so that nobody will change the top cell and mistakenly copy down all the rows

(Please note that all of this does not mean dumbing everything down to a beginner level - it means simplifying and clarifying to the level that makes life easy for your particular checkers).

Once you have a simple goal like the one above, you can revisit the various lists of good practices and weigh them up - do they make things easier or safer? They are no longer mantras to be followed blindly, but sensible suggestions which you can weigh, and accept or reject. I'm not going to try to give you my own best practices "list", because it is specific to my business needs, and I think it is best for each team to develop its own guidelines, with individuals feeling involved and actively participating.

User attitudes

I believe the most important attitude change here is for users to realise that they are building the spreadsheet for someone else, and that needs to be constantly in their mind.

Back in the days when we thought the answer lay in imposing guidelines, I once had a young user say "The guidelines take all the enjoyment out of my work. Excel was the one place where I could express myself at work". To me, that reaction says two things about users (and especially inexperienced users)

users need guidance, because spreadsheets are not artistic creations where you can experiment with colours, layouts, exotic functions and show off how clever you are - they are business tools which need to give the right answer. Period.
users need to feel challenged and involved, rather than just told to follow orders, otherwise they are going to fight you all the way.

Does it work?

I had a taste of the results even before we did this research. I was working with an office in another city, and we found we had to document and comment our emailed spreadsheets more fully because we couldn't explain them in person. Even that one step on its own made a big difference to quality, and what impressed me was how quickly the younger users came on board and did really good documentation and suggested better ideas. So that was a good sign.

Since we did the research a few years ago, I've eaten my own dog food, applying the "easy to check and safe to use" approach to everything I do, and spreading the message to younger users. To my surprise, I find it has increased my own enjoyment in building spreadsheets, because it gives me a constant challenge to keep making things simpler, more checkable, and clearer. It's also made my own work much, much safer.

I've found young users to be very receptive, because the goal doesn't necessarily mean dull boring spreadsheets, but involves colours and design and user needs and other non-technical issues, and when they see all the design choices open to them, and they have a clear purpose, they find it stimulating and challenging. As I said above, I think the key to gaining user acceptance is changing it from an instruction into a challenge, which is to keep finding better ways to make checkable and safe spreadsheets. We all love challenges...

I also like that when I sit down with younger users and review their spreadsheets, I never have to say "I know better than you". Instead, I put our goal on the whiteboard, and I remind them that everything we do is aimed at meeting it. I find I can discuss different options freely without intimidating them, and they can often improve on my suggestions.

Another advantage of a simple goal is that it can be understood by people at all levels, even managers with little spreadsheet knowledge. We may not all know how to build a good spreadsheet, but we should know a bad one when we see it. Managers are important because the goal needs to become part of a team's way of doing things (what some call "culture"), so that people are actively rewarded and singled out when they do something that promotes safety or checkability, and so that people know where management's priorities lie.

What about skills training? We found it was still important, but it was no longer necessary to aim for very high levels of expertise for everyone. What matters is that everyone has sufficient skills for the job, and given the aim of simplicity, the barrier is not excessively high. It also matters that the whole team uses the same techniques as far as possible, for consistency, and this needs to be embedded in the training, as well as the realisation that you don't build spreadsheets for yourself, but for other people, so you need to understand their limits and their expectations.

Finally..

I found this research fascinating, because it opened up a new way of looking at spreadsheet quality - a surprisingly human approach for such a technical tool.

And on a personal note, I found it gave me a new and different enthusiasm. Whereas before, I was always trying to do new "clever" things with Excel, now I try to find simpler and safer ways to do things, which is equally challenging.

For example, I used to write a lot of VBA code, but now I have a rule that business rules and logic (eg industry specific pricing formulae or financial projections) don't go in code, because it is a black box which few people can check. I reserve code for automation and generic utility functions,and the rest has to go in the spreadsheet - and stay simple. This has not been easy in some cases, but it has been a lot of fun. And the quality is definitely better.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has similar or different experiences in improving spreadsheet quality in a business environment.

More advanced Excel automation & simplification

2008-01-28T13:26:00Z

In a previous post, I showed a way of automating and/or simplifying Excel by processing many data records through a single sheet using data tables, rather like a merge. If you liked that, you should love this more advanced tool, written in VBA.

It is generic enough to be used on a wide range of projects without modification, so I'll call it an automation "engine" below. If you find it useful, it is free to use and modify, providing you don't claim undue credit or sell it.

It was built to power an actuarial valuation system which can be extremely complex, because each client implementation is unique and has to be configured separately. The complexity and non-standard configurations make checking very difficult, so this has been a good test of the software.

Importantly, the engine allows every single formula to be laid out clearly and simply on worksheets, and checked step by step at every level, from the lowest level to the highest. So if you want, you can see all the calculations for product X, in a specific future year Y, laid out in detail across a whole sheet. It also means non-experts can configure the system entirely in worksheets, because the engine only provides automation and doesn't contain any business logic or client details.

The engine also allows us to nest as many calculation loops as we like, eg we can run 6 scenarios, each involving processing 1,000 products, each of which requires 15 future years of calculations, each of which requires several calculations - all by pressing one button.

All of this made our system simpler, much safer, more accessible and highly flexible, which is exactly what we needed. The only downside is that it isn't as fast as a pure VBA program, but it's still fast enough for us, and a small price to pay.

How it works

I'm going to pitch this explanation at the level of experienced business spreadsheet users who, like myself, work with nasty spreadsheets and who are motivated to automate or simplify them. The section below introduces the engine, then I have a workbook which explores its features step by step.

The engine is like a souped up data table. It puts a sequence of numbers in a cell (ie 1, 2, 3,..), calculates, and stores results chosen by the user. However, it can nest calculation loops, so that for example, each time sheet A calculates, sheet B will calculate Y times, and each time sheet B calculates, sheet C calculates Z times. This means that sheet C will calculate Y x Z times as often as sheet A. If you are familiar with programming, we are talking about nested For...Next loops and subroutines, within worksheets, which is something I've always wanted in Excel.

Each calculation loop requires its own worksheet, which has special range names that tell the engine what to do on that sheet. For example, there are range names that tell the engine

how many times to loop through this sheet (can be a formula)
the name of the child sheet, if any, which should be run every time this sheet runs (that child sheet will then have its own fields which tell it how many times to run, etc) - this is how the loops are nested
what results to store

and more. It can also keep running totals of results, and copy hardcoded results to separate sheets.

The code engine comes with a worksheet template with about 10 named cells which are all you need to configure your system. You should not have to touch or even look at the code.

It's hard to explain it in much more detail without looking at it, so I suggest you do that now. I've provided 3 files

explanation of the features with several examples using a simple financial model (Engine Demo.xls)
a non-financial example showing how to solve a word puzzle game (WordPuzzle.zip)
the template for your own use (Template.xls)

The documentation is not as complete as I'd like, but please bear in mind this is all done in my spare time. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

An awesome powertool buried in Excel

2008-01-22T03:19:00Z

I build complex spreadsheets, and I often have trouble fitting everything into Excel tables - I'd really like a way of simplifying things. At other times, I want to run a set of different scenarios through a spreadsheet, and I'd like to automate them to be self-updating.

There is a code-free solution to both these problems which has been there all along, but I didn't see it until a few years ago. It exploits data tables, an almost forgotten feature of Excel.

If you have the same problems as me, or if you simply want to learn new techniques, please read on. This has become one of my most important tools, so I'm going to take a little time and space to explain, and of course I have a demo for you.

Data tables - in brief

Data tables offer basic automation. Suppose we have a simple calculator, and we want to test the effect of different interest rates. We set up a data table, giving it our list of different rates, the cell we want Excel to put them into, and the results we want to store. Excel puts the rates into the interest rate cell one at a time, calculates the results, and copies them into a table with one row for each rate. Importantly, data tables recalculate every time Excel calculates, so you don't need to do this manually.

Automating

Data tables could be great for automating scenarios, except they may have 10-20 variables, not just one. If we could get the data table to update more than one variable, it could be very useful.

And there is a simple way.

We put all our scenario variables in a table, with one row per scenario, and one column per variable, like so.

The scenario selector cell in our calculation section tells us which row to use in the scenario table, ie it can be 1, 2, 3, up to the number of scenarios. We can use the OFFSET command to read in each variable from the correct row in its column - you can see the formulae in blue next to the green cells above.

What this means is that we can change all the scenario variables - as many as we like - by changing just one (scenario selector) cell - so now we can use a data table to run through all the scenarios by putting 1, 2, 3... in the scenario cell, calculating, and pulling out the chosen results.

If this explanation isn't clear, see the demo workbook below.

But there's an even better use for data tables.

Simplifying complex spreadsheets using by calculating 'one at a time'

A big limitation of Excel is that it only offers 2-way row/column tables. I might have 1,000 product records, and for each product, I need to forecast 10 years of revenue, and each year's figures require 15 different calculations. What I really need is a 1000 x 10 x 15 table, ie a 3-way or even 4-way table.

Usually, people try to cram everything into the same rows as the data records, eg a table of 1,000 rows x many columns, which can get very messy.

However, data tables give us a neat way to add a third dimension. I'll illustrate with my example above. Suppose I set up a sheet which does the calculations for just one product. I can quite easily lay out my 10 years of 15 calculations each, in a table.

I put a record selector cell at the top. I use this cell to read in all the data for the selected product, using the OFFSET command as already illustrated above. So now I can calculate any product simply by putting its row number in the selector cell.

Then I use a data table to automatically run all the row numbers one by one through this cell, in a similar way to the scenarios above, storing the results, one row per product, on another sheet. (I call this - not very imaginatively - calculating 'one at a time'). Not only is it much, much simpler to understand and check, but it is also safer, in that

I have a whole sheet to do the calculations for a data record, rather than one row
the same single set of calculation cells is used for every data record - there is no need to copy formulae down all the data rows and maybe get them wrong
the data, calculations and results can all be on different sheets, avoiding the problems that happen when they are mingled together

Effectively we've added an extra dimension to Excel by giving ourselves a whole sheet to do each product calculation, rather than a single row.

If you've read this far..

..try the demos here (Data Tables.xls). You may think it's only a toy, so I built a full size example here (Data Tables In Use.xls), which has a couple of useful tips.

Is this worth exploring? All I can say is that I'm an actuary who does financial projections and who lives in Excel all day long. The technique above has made a huge difference to my work, making it simpler, safer and allowing me to build much more powerful models. I thoroughly recommend it as an essential tool for professional modelling in Excel.

Finally, VBA code can do the same as data tables, but more efficiently and with extra features, so you can build even more amazing models, but that's for another post.

Dynamic user interfaces

2008-01-19T10:32:00Z

When I present spreadsheet results to clients, there are always several variables that I know the clients will want to play with ("What if this was higher, or if that was lower, or if I could see just those 3 items..."). This means I need to give the client choices and options, but I need to make them simple to use and have the model respond immediately.

I've put together a collection of some techniques which you may find useful for this. Specifically, how to

make charts or lists dynamically adjust to the amount of data provided
allow users to choose how many items to show, how to sort them, even which items to show (from a list), all without any code
make multi-select listboxes work (this requires a little code, which I have written for you)

Please have a look at the workbook here (Dynamic User Selection.xls).

For the people who are wary of any workbook containing code, I will declare in advance that it contains two code modules, one containing the listbox code, and another to copy the listbox code to your own workbook, when you press a button in the workbook - this is for people with no VBA experience who would find it difficult to copy the code manually.

Comments, suggestions and improvements are welcome.

A little library of gems for VBA

2008-01-17T22:07:00Z

Did you know that VBA can get the user's login name, tell you where My Documents lives (and other folders), talk to the Windows registry, handle regular expressions (eg search for words of 5-8 characters starting with G), create file shortcuts, and more?

Nor did I, until I read a forum post showing how to use regular expressions in Excel, by setting a reference to the Microsoft Scripting Runtime in VBA (Tools, References from the menu). I was intrigued, and I had a look at what else this Scripting library could do. I was amazed by the range of functions it provides, including those above. You can of course use the Windows API to do most of them (although creating file shortcuts is notoriously difficult), but the Scripting library just makes them so easy. It also has some database functions.

I created a demo workbook (Scripting.xls) to demonstrate. There is no user interface, just go straight to the code (I suggest you start with the TEST_CODE module).

PS If you don't know any VBA, and if you desperately want any of these functions, let me know and I'll help you use them.

How to build an awesome user interface for results

2008-01-16T03:10:00Z

The best work in the world is undervalued if presented badly.

Suppose you've built a big model with lots of results to show. Imagine having a single Results sheet, with a list of charts and tables. Each time you select one, it appears like magic on the screen, replacing the one that was there before. Best of all, it needs no VBA code whatsoever!

There are two ways I know of to do it. Both are demonstrated in this file (Dynamic UI.xls).

1. Hyperlinks

A simple method is simply to create a hyperlink for each item, and link it to the range for that item, so Excel scrolls to the selected range. If you freeze the window so that the hyperlinks are always showing at the top (or left), then it will appear to the user that charts/tables are being swapped in and out of the middle of the screen, whereas in fact Excel is just scrolling up and down (or left and right).

2. Picture box

This method is awesome, amazing and truly magical, in my opinion and almost nobody knows about it. Stay with me on this. It's a little hard to explain in words (I need to draw diagrams), but it's easy to use once you get it.

Excel allows you to use a picture box (eg any picture you paste into Excel) to act as a kind of web cam onto a named range of cells on any sheet. Suppose we have set up a range called Table1, for a table of figures. If we select (ie click) our picture box, and type =Table1 into the address bar (where you normally type your cell formula) and press Enter, hey presto, the picturebox suddenly shows the contents of Table1, even if Table1 is on another sheet.

Excel calls this a camera tool, and it behaves like one, because if there is a chart on top of the selected cell range, the picture box will show the chart. In fact, if you had (say) a chart, a table, and some explanatory text all in one place, and you define a range of cells that encloses all these things, the picture box will show all of them. It is still a picture box, but it can show all this stuff from anywhere else in the workbook.

So suppose we set up our Results sheet with a dropdown list of all the charts and tables we offer, and we put a picture box in the middle of the screen. We can make our picture box show any one of the charts or tables without having to go to the sheet where they actually live. There's only one problem - how do we tell the picturebox to change the range it is looking at, when the user makes a choice?

When I first tried to do this, I nearly went mad trying to figure it out, but the solution is quite simple.

1. we make a list in a table of the range names for each chart and table we want to offer, and when the user selects an item from the dropdown list, we look up the range name we want to use and put it in a cell, say C43. So it might be "Table_1",for example.

2. we define a special range name (we'll call it PicRange, say) with a formula like this = INDIRECT(Results!$C$43).

3. we select the picture box and put = PicRange in the address bar

Now, suppose the user selects one of the tables.

C43 looks up the range name in the list
the range PicWindow turns this name from text, into an actual range of cells, and
the picture box displays what is in that range
automatically, no code required.

See it all in action here (Dynamic UI.xls), and then tell me if this isn't just the coolest thing for presenting a bunch of results.

The beauty of it is that the actual charts and tables can be on other sheets, so if, for example, you need to widen the cells for one table, it won't affect the width of the cells in another table on a different sheet. If you had to put all the results on one sheet, as in the hyperlink solution above, then you can quickly run into problems with conflicting cell width and height between different tables.

Creating Word reports from Excel

2008-01-14T03:58:00Z

If you create regular Word reports from Excel, how would you like to be able to produce each report with just one click, instead of manually copying and pasting all the tables and charts from Excel to Word?

I've written an Excel utility to do this automatically. The principle is quite simple - the program looks at all the bookmarks in the Word document. If any of their names start with "tag_", the program looks for the range or chart in Excel with a similar name, and copies it across.

This means that you can set up a Word report and an Excel spreadsheet with matching names, then run this utility, and hey presto! A nice thing about it is that if you need to re-create the report later, eg because you found an error, you can simply run the utility again and it will copy over the previous charts and tables.

You will find the utility, with instructions and an example Word document, here > Reporting.zip

If you bother to read the code, I apologise if it doesn't meet world best standards, but in the real world, we don't have time. You'll see it does provide several different ways of pasting charts, because this can sometimes be a problem.

Using hyperlinks for navigation in Excel

2008-01-12T03:29:00Z

So your new workbook needs some navigation links. You may want to use hyperlinks, because most people are familiar with them, thanks to the internet, but they create a couple of little problems we need to solve. The example workbook here (Hyperlinks.xls) illustrates these problems and their solutions.

First - creating a hyperlink

First, to create a hyperlink, select the cell containing the link text, select Insert, Hyperlink, choose "Place in this document" on the leftof the dialog, and then choose the sheet and enter the cell reference.

You can also use a textbox,which lets you put the hyperlink anywhere,and not just in a cell. Right click on the textbox and chooseHyperlink. You'll need to format it, to remove the border,and change the text to underlined blue, so it looks like a hyperlink.

Problem - hyperlinks break easily

Suppose you point your hyperlink at cell C25, and later, you insert a row higher up. You would expect the hyperlink to now point at A26, but it still points at C25, *sigh*.

The answer is to create a range name for C25, and point the hyperlink at the range name. Then it will update correctly.

Problem - Excel shows the wrong cells

Suppose we want to link to a table starting at C25 onwards. The hyperlink will show you C25, but it may be at the bottom of the screen,with most of the table hidden. What happens depends on whether you were above, below, to the left or the right of the linked cell.

So how do you get Excel to show the right cells, every time? The simple answer is to link to more than one cell. Suppose you have a set of tables down the sheet,so we are navigating up and down between them.

I insert a new column (A) at the left and then hide it. Suppose I am linking to a table starting at row 25. I point the hyperlink to A25:A200 (say), so that Excel can't fit them all on the screen. What it does is put the top left linked cell, ie A25, at top left of screen, and you will get the full table showing. It will do this regardless of whether you were above or below the table when you clicked the link. Note that I hide the new column A so the user doesn't see all the cells being selected.

You can do this with rows as well, if you are navigating from left to right. (Don't ask me about navigating both across and down in one sheet - I don't mix them).

Problem- you need a dynamic (changing) link

Suppose you want a link to go to different places depending on what the user has chosen. You can do this dynamically, as the example file above shows.

What I use

I started programming way back,when we used buttons for everything, including navigation. Now, however, buttons are used on the internet for actions (eg submitting forms) and hyperlinks are used for navigation. So I use hyperlinks, mostly.

Finally, please look at the example file: Hyperlinks.xls

A blog for Excel users rather than developers

2008-01-12T00:10:00Z

I'm interested in practical techniques and tools which can be used every day to make business users more effective, and that's what this blog will be about. The topics will not just be technical (eg the best use of worksheet functions), but will also cover things like creating a professional looking chart or user interface.

Wherever possible, there will be actual examples (in Excel 2003 - business hasn't got to Excel 2007 yet) so you can get started right away.

My background is that I've been working heavily with Excel for over 15 years in my role as an actuary for a large professional consulting firm. In that time, I've explored many options for making Excel more flexible and powerful, as well as safer - because mistakes cost money and put business at risk.

Comments and suggestions are most welcome.