Excel is powerful, but it’s also unforgiving. A single oversight can spiral into a major problem, especially when money or sensitive data is involved. And you know what they say, prevention is better than cure.
5Not Structuring Your Workbook Properly
I have seen messy workbooks in my lifetime, with problems like inconsistent formatting and scattered formulas. The former can make the sheet hard to look at, navigate, and analyze. The latter can lead to hidden errors, which can produce wrong calculations, hindering decision-making in the process.
Those are just specific examples, but on a broad scale, a poorly structured workbook can, for instance, make collaboration harder. It can turn an Excel sheet into a frustrating puzzle of trying to find the key data and formulas, as others try to understand with vague labels and messy layouts.
It can also be time-consuming to fix, which can lead to wasted hours, duplicate work, and even conflicts (both inside and outside the sheet).
This Is How I Tidy Up a Messy Excel Sheet
Turn chaos into clarity, one cell at a time.
To avoid creating a poorly structured workbook, establish a consistent layout—download or create your Excel templates if you have to. To improve navigation, use clear labels and color-code sections. Also, put all important calculations in one specific place to make them easier to find and fix (should they need tweaking).
4Not Using the Correct Functions
Some formulas work better than others in certain scenarios. A good example of this is the rigidity of theVLOOKUP function in Excel—it requires the lookup value to be in the first column of the table array and the lookup column to be on the right. If the table array is rearranged or you need to find a value on the right side of the lookup value, you may run into problems.
In these scenarios,XLOOKUP can be better than VLOOKUPsince it’s more flexible and dynamic. Take a look at the data in the screenshot below, for example:
If I want to find the stock levels for the video games, I would enter the formula below somewhere, like cellE1:
Here, the lookup column in the formula is3, which translates tocolumn Cin the Excel sheet. If someone deletes columnB, VLOOKUP will display an error because it can’t find the value.
To fix this, I would need to recalculate the columns and update the value of the lookup column to2. That’s because the data in columnCmoved toBafter the deletion, and VLOOKUP couldn’t tell because the lookup column is hard-coded.
Now imagine if these deletions happened in multiple places or large Excel sheets. Fixing this would be frustrating and time-consuming—not to mention what would happen if you miss something.
XLOOKUP can get around this problem. Here’s what the formula would look like instead:
If I delete columnB, XLOOKUP will automatically change theC2:C4part of the formula toB2:B4—no errors or frustrations.
3Using Hard-Coded Values in Formulas
With the VLOOKUP function, we saw a problem with hard-coded values—when values change, they don’t get updated automatically. For instance, below is the syntax for calculating the discount on a product:
If you hard-codediscount_rate, it means that if the rate changes, you have to go everywhere you entered it in the sheet and manually change it. This is a tedious and error-prone task, especially in large sheets.
If you enter the discount rate in a cell and reference it in the formula instead, all you have to do is change the value in that cell. Then, it will be automatically updated in every formula that references it.
2Using the Wrong Cell Reference
Many Excel users don’t understandcell references in Excel. You have a relative reference (e.g.,=A1), which changes the row and column based on the cell it’s copied to. There is an absolute reference (e.g.,=$A$1), which doesn’t change, no matter where it’s copied. You also have a mixed reference (e.g.,=$A1) where either the column or row doesn’t change when copied.
It’s important to know cell references because using the wrong ones can cause incorrect calculations and data inconsistencies. you may only imagine how time-consuming this can be to fix in a large Excel sheet.
Let’s look at a simple example using the data in the screenshot below:
Suppose you want to add the value in cellC1with the ones in columnA(A1:A3). You would normally write the following formula in cellB1and then copy it toB2andB3:
Upon looking at the results, it becomes immediately clear—the result in the copied cells is wrong. Since this was a relative reference, it changed the reference fromC1toC2andC3when the formula was copied to cellsB2andB3.
To avoid this and get the right results, using an absolute reference in the formula would help. Here is what that would look like:
Now, if you copy the formula to the cells below, you will get the right results since the reference toC1doesn’t change.
1Ignoring Data Validation
Data validation ensures that users enter the correct data in a cell. For instance, if you need them to enter numeric values in certain cells, and they enter text instead, it can cause errors and mess up analyses. Another example is if you need them to enter numbers within a certain range, and they don’t, leading to incorrect calculations.
Make Excel Smarter With Dynamic Dropdown Lists: Here’s How They Work
Why wade through endless choices? Refine your lists on the fly with dynamic dropdown lists.
With data validation, you can, for instance, show the user an error when they enter text in a cell that requires numerical values or when they enter a number that is out of range. You can evenuse dropdown lists in Excelto restrict entries to predefined options. Overall, data validation is a great way to ensure consistent and accurate data input.
Avoiding these common mistakes can ensure that you have a clean and accurate Excel sheet. Following these practices can help avoid costly mistakes in the long run, especially when your workbooks need to scale or be shared with colleagues. And they’re quite easy to keep in mind.
