Lets take a break from all the Excel trickery. Today I want to share a joyous news with you all.
Today I want to take you back in time, all the way to 1987. I want to share a story with you. So, sit back, sip some coffee and enjoy.
Year 1987 and aftermath
My dad is working as a sales manager back then. He is a quintessential salesman. Busy, flamboyant, confident, tall & fun. I remember him very vaguely now. But I remember having lots of good time at family dinners (we are a family of 5 – my younger brother, mom, dad, dad’s mom & myself). I remember riding his scooter on trips to my school, family clinic or just around the corner.
Then, as if someone shook us from a dream and took everything away, my dad suddenly passed away in the summer of that year. He had a fatal liver failure.
It was a big shock for all of us, especially my mom, who had been married to him for 7 years. My mother studied only up to Class 12. She did not have any job skills back then. On top, she is burdened with 2 little kids (my brother is 5 and I was 6 at that time). We did not have money, house or any other type of assets.
So we moved to my mother’s mother house. My grand parents were kind enough to support us in those dark years.
With in a few years we started getting regular pension, thanks to my dad’s life insurance. This gave a sense of financial security and freedom to us. But, we still felt one gnawing pain. We did not have a home to live.
Between 1990 and 2006, we stayed in 8 different houses. This constant shifting & lack of security bothered my brother and me very much.We decided that, we would get a house as soon as we can.
In fact, I even said to myself that I would not get married before owning a house.
Fast forward to 2000s
So I wanted to own a house, before building a family. But then, I met Jo, we dated for a few years, realized that we are perfect for each other. We could not imagine living without each other. So we got married in year 2007. There was still no house.
Meanwhile, housing prices kept on raising and made my dream almost impossible to achieve without a back breaking mortgage loan. So I kept saying myself, “let me work hard for a few years, save money and then, we will get a house.”
In year 2009, we became parents to a set of lovely, naughty and adorable twins. Nakshatra (girl) & Nishanth (boy) transformed our lives in ways we could not imagine. While the joys of parenting are overwhelming, I was worried all the time about the house. “What if something bad happens and we end up without a home.”
Still we kept saving and living frugally.
Enter 2011 – In search of a house
Since we are against loans (see note 1), we waited until we have enough funds to purchase the house we want. Finally, by March 2011, we reached that stage. So we started looking for a suitable house.
We went to property fairs, told everyone in our immediate social circles, approached agents, pored thru classifieds and online ads. Very soon, we are very tired and felt hopeless.
Good houses almost always have exorbitant prices
Bad or poor houses are over priced too.
We almost gave up and decided to live in a rented house for few more years. But then, a neighbor told us about a house that is up for sale, in the locality where we live. I went and checked it out on the same day. I liked it. It seemed like a house we could call home.
Few days later, we visited the house again. This time with Jo & kids. We liked the space and calm neighborhood. We discussed with a few relatives & friends and made an offer to the owners. After some negotiations, we purchased the house on 26th July, this year.
Then we started renovating the house. It took 2 and half months to get everything done. We have remodeled the kitchen, done wood-work (cupboards), changed flooring, added a car park, store room, upgraded some of the electrical & plumbing fixtures.
Finally, we moved in to the house last Saturday (15th October) and loving it ever since.
Details & Photos of our home
- Total land area: 350 Sq. Yards (292 sq. mts)
- House carpet area: 1000 Sft (92 sq. mts)
- Rooms: 2 bedrooms, living, kitchen, storage, 2 bath & toilets
- Purchase price: ~ $100k
- Location: Vizag
These photos were taken on October 3rd, when we had the traditional Gruha Pravesham (it is like house warming celebration). So you so almost no furniture. The photo of my office room is taken today (October 20th).
Our Living Room
This is our Kitchen
My Office Room (doubles up as guest bedroom too)
Our Living room from Kitchen
Entering our House (Gruha Pravesham) with a Ribbon Cut
Jo and I in our Kitchen
For more pics, checkout New Home Set on my Flickr page.
Thank you & Thanks to Excel
As we live, breathe, enjoy and sleep in this home, I could not thank enough for your support in making this happen. I am so glad you identify with the mission of Chandoo.org and spread a good word about it. I am so humbled that you support us by joining our training programs, purchasing our e-books & products. I am so thankful to you for spending time with us everyday, learning & sharing new things.
Thank you.
I am also thankful to MS Excel, the powerful, awesome tool that transformed my life. It gave me the courage to quit a comfortable job and embark on an exciting journey of running a small business. Thank you so much Microsoft & Excel for being awesome.
One last thing
There is a reason why I am writing this today instead of last Saturday, when we moved in to the new home. Today (Oct 20) is also my birthday. As I celebrate my 29th birthday, I feel immensely grateful, content and happy for the journey so far. The fact that I can share my life, knowledge and mistakes with you all makes me very lucky. I hope the coming years are just as wonderful for you and me.
PS: because of the house renovation work during last 8 weeks, I could not reply to as many emails as I want to. So if you are one of those who mailed me and never heard back, please resend and I will get back to you at the earliest.
More Personal Stories
If you would like to learn more about the personal side of Chandoo.org, have a read thru these,
- Story of Chandoo.org Start-up
- Thank you Excel, We have a car
- How Excel Transformed my life (story of 1 year of running Chandoo.org)
- Christmas & New Year Wishes – 2011
- Meet Nakshatra & Nishanth – our kids
- I am Dad!!!
Added later:
Note 1: As some of you pointed, I did have a mortgage loan (which has 2 more months on it). I borrowed this year 2007 for an apartment (condo) I purchased for my brother. Even though that house is not for me, I still pay the loan as I love my brother and want to support him.
Note2: Our new home is in Vizag, the same place where we have been living for last 2 years.
70 Responses to “10 Tips to Make Better and Boss-proof Excel Spreadsheets”
Proper print settings on each sheet helps your boss to print the reports quickly without hastling you after printing irrelevant stuff.
It is highly relevant that you print your reports once before circulating it to your boss or other people.
Knowing that what your boss actully look at in the entire report can be very usefull. You can build a good summary of what your boss wants and put that as separate tab in the form of dashbord report, so that your boss does not peep into rest of your work and start pocking you with irrelevant stuff.
You can also put that Dashboard into the email summary and not trouble your boss to open your workbook. This is ultimate boss proof tip and I have been using this for long time now.
Thank you Chandoo. Great checklist to follow before delivering an excel spreadsheet to someone else. Some points you mention are seemingly so simple that we might overlook them - like selecting cell#A1, but they make a difference to the impression the spreadsheet creates at the recipient's end.
Dear Chandoo,
Great tricks.
One trick I use (more and more) is to hide the sheet tabs and to hide the formulabar via the 'tools' 'options' and the 'view'-tab.
Another trick is to limiting the scrolling area to hide all columms (or rows) until the end of the sheet. Select the column, press CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHT, right-click on the column and hide (also possible via VBA).
I was wondering though if 'boss-proof' is related to 'excel-stupid-proof'?
Cheerio
Tom
Just wondering if the hiding formula bar really works when a recipient opens it whose "view-show-Formula Bar" is still checked...
It's saved to the sheet I believe.
Absolutely agree with this post !!!
on the past months, after reading this blog, PTS's and Debra's Contextures, one of the things I've beggining to do as a best practice is to create all my spreadsheets with 3 tabs: data, summary and control, and this last one generally xlveryhidden, and sometimes the data one hidden as well.
And this restrictions are also being applied as best practice, and with a lot of benefits as you well mentioned. Furthermore, if combined with dynamic named ranges, formulae is more readable to users, and the WOW effect is often achieved when the question "How did you do that?" arises.....
Keep on the good posts !!!
Rgds,
Martin
Would you mind sharing an example of this technique?
Is there a way to keep the data in a seperate file rather than the same excel. This way you could keep presentation and data separate. But not sure how you would link up the two excel files
Yes, there is a way but it is not prefered.
I used this a coulple of times, (You need to code).
mail me if you need assistance with some sort
It entirely is possible. The problem comes though, when you share the spreadsheet.
If the recipient doesn't have both files, or access to both, things break when the values try to refresh.
ey, why is the boss a she??
haha - welcome to the future. About time.
Chandoo, one more trick that we could use with the help of VBA, RT click on the View code of the particular sheet, in the properties table set the Visible status to 2-xlveryhidden, this ensures the sheet name does not show up even when the BOSS tries to unhide the sheet from the sheet >> unhide option. Dont forget to password protect the VBA (available under tools >> VBAProject properties.
Very good tips, although I have to say Chandoo, that your cats probably need to be spayed or neutered if they behave like that. =)
Good to see all these tips on a single "sheet", and giving the name *boss proof*, and Dilbert was a great welcome 😀
The best way to "Boss Proof" (and "Self Proof"!!) a spreadsheet is to keep back ups. I use a macro that saves the last 3 significant versions of the spreadsheet all with a date stamp included in the file name.
To quickly select cell A1 on all sheet, use CTRL-Page UP or CTRL-Page down to navigate between sheets and CTRL-Home to select cell A1 (if you have frozen pane, it will select the top left cell of the section below).
Great list. And I follow every single item... I also use a consistent background color for input cells in every report/dashboard. And I use a little VBA to identify the user and change the report accordingly (selecting the right market, for example).
Chandoo, Nice post. I like to use the hidden Paste Picture Link option. Keep the original report you want displayed on a hidden sheet and only show the boss the report picture. Also great to watch the confusion when boss trying to select cells is worth the effort!
I usually save as PDF if there's no interactivity in the report. That way nothing can go wrong 🙂
PDFs work a dream for me too and saves the boss's EA from telling me all the time that she can't print my work!!
@All.. thanks a ton for sharing your ideas. I am thinking of writing a part 2 of this post explaining some of your ideas in detail.
@Bazlina ... I will make sure the boss is a HE in the next post 🙂
"10 Tips to Make Better and Boss-proof Excel Spreadsheets"...
Unless of course your Boss reads PHD !
Great article with one glaring error.
If (like me) the majority of your spreadsheet errors are *caused* by cats, adding more cats is just going to increase the problem.
@Hui you always have a boss, even if you are boss. If you dont have a boss, then may be a cat or even a dog.
@Debra: hmm... Are you sure the cats are not after the mouse? Go learn some keyboard shortcuts.. now 😛
Great Web Site. I've done almost all the above in trying to build my application and it's taken me hours and hours reading my "dummies " book. Thank you for all this information.
Is there a formula I can use that will automatically return to "A1" cell should an associate use the 10 page spreadsheet I have?
Is there a way to set an expiration date on my workbook so that beynd that date no one will get beyond the cover page?
Paul, in all my "user facing" workbooks (those that I distribute) I create a named range called "Home" on the worksheet(s) that are most likely to be used. Then I write a little VBA that selects the Home range whenever that worksheet is activated or on other triggers depending on the context of the sheet. This is more appropriate for the dashboard tabs or summary tabs my job requires.
But I usually set this functionality up early on in the design process so I can take advantage of it as well. I will sometimes assign a keystroke to the GoHome macro.
I'm in the marketing department (aka the picture department) and have to say that the macros/Excel sheets from our controlling department are the worst! They come to me to sort out the mess!!
@Peter: You can try creating a table of contents and then place it on each and every sheet so that user can jump to anywhere from anywhere. Here is a tutorial to help you get started.
Also, You can prevent users from accessing the workbook after a certain date using macros. But users can certainly by pass it by disallowing macros on that workbook.
@Jimmy: Wow... (just kidding) Welcome 🙂
I was recently given a spreadsheet to improve upon.
One of the "boss-proof" actions that the previous author had used was to use data validation instead of protecting the sheet to ward off people changing formulas.
After entering a formula or value into a cell, use data validation to only allow, in this spreadsheet, whole numbers between 9999999 to 99999999.
It's a bit of a pain to actually correct stuff instead of just unprotecting a sheet, but for those that know how to unprotect a sheet, it's a definite way to keep them from fooling with formulas.
Puchu,
We would love to see "Print" in your links section.
It helps us taking prints as neat as your posts 🙂
Chandoo,
I've emailed you a couple of times looking for avenues I need to try to put my workbook on the Internet.
I notice you use PremiumThemes for your Web Site...You must feel good about their service. Do you think PremiumThemes might be an option for me?
Paul
Instead of :
Now Right click and select “Hide” option.
Shortcut can be used : Ctrl+0 (to hide)..
sir i wanted to know,how to hide cells or tab without hiding rows and columns? PLZ TELL ME
Hi Chandoo!
Great tips! Im researching on an excel project now that you can create to "lighten" the size without sacrificing the data inside..
We usually encounter problems with the data, excel file is shared, in a network folder.. and there are 11 people that enters their own productivity in each tab.. however, there comes a time (uncertain) where some of the data they enter either gets deleted or changes value.. could this be a file size problem? are there other ways to create this file that will decrease data inconsistencies?
thanks!
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You will find another quick and easy technique here:
http://www.onsitetrainingcourses.com.au/main/page_blog_hiding_most_excel_rows_and_columns.html
[...] tips: Learn how to make better Excel sheets Spread some love,It makes you awesome! [...]
Save what you want the boss to see as a PDF. Absolutely foolproof and no cats hurt in the process.
I really enjoyed allot of the tips on here, especially the one on comments on cells. That will come in handy on allot of our projects. I would also like to share on on my little tricks. I am constantly working on several different reports with several different systems and in doing so I am constantly running in problems and my way out of them is simply calling <a href"http://www.reportingguru.com/"> Reporting Guru </a> and telling exactly what I'm going through and they can tell me exactly how to get out.
One of the things I've found to boss proof my worksheets are a few simple VBA scripts to automatically protect the workbook/worksheets, and direct them to the "Quick Look" dashboard page, I hide all of the raw data sheets before saving. The script looks like this:
Private Sub Workbook_Open()
Sheets("Summary").Protect Password:="password"
Sheets("Labor Cost by Site").Protect Password:="password", AllowUsingPivotTables: =true
Sheets("Labor Cost by month").Protect Password:="password"
Sheets("Quick Look").Protect Password:="password"
Sheets("Quick look").Activate
ActiveWorkbook.Protect Password:="password", Structure:=True, Windows:=False
End Sub
I also have a pivot that contains labor cost data which cannot be refreshed while the worksheet is locked.
Private Sub Worksheet_Activate()
Sheets("labor cost by site").Unprotect Password = "password"
Set pvttable = Worksheets("labor cost by site").Range("a1").PivotTable
pvttable.RefreshTable
Sheets("labor cost by site").Protect Password = "password", AllowUsingPivotTables:=True
End Sub
OPPAN GANGAM STYLE!
good
Your post are always with something creative , thanks for sharing this information , your post are worth reading and implementing 🙂 great job
Hi,
I will try to learn every point slowly !
Shokran Chandoo.
Best boss Proofing of sheets is useing indirect(address 😛 this prevents most smartass bossess from doing any actual changes cus the formula will be long and hard to understand for any bystanders..
Also putting the actual calculations on a different sheet can make a sheet bulletproof from bosses.. especialy if you put them in the Very hidden so when the boss learns how to unhide sheets he wont simply find them.
One thing iv also learned is that most bosses is scared of macros that gives "virus" warnings before beeing run 😛 That include the default warning from Excel...
Long formulas or work arounds is best way to go.
What's the best way to amalgamate two existing excel spreadsheets into one?
Two teams use the same format spreadsheets with individual data split into calendar months and I want to make them one without manually entering the data.
Alt + D + D + N
Write a query and viola, Two sheets into one.
Changing the properties of the file to read-only . (While the file is closed, right click on the file and check the read-only box.)
This allows my boss(es) to access the file -- even change it -- without being able to save their changes. If a boss likes his 'new' version, he can save it with a different file name.
But now -- how to prevent the boss from deleting the file altogether? Or deleting the whole network?
Hey man.
Think you can go as easy as to make a shortcut that links to your read only document. Then the boss wont know of the root document. He can figure it out but lets face it. He is a boss and 70% if them wont know squat
Instead of "Hiding" rows & columns, I find "Grouping" works best as its very easy to quickly see if a worksheet has hidden rows/columns. Sometimes hiding a random row/column is not easily noticed and can create issues.
I have one xl sheet with different dates in many columns and one raw's. I want to send this data to another xl sheets for each date. if somebody can help me will be great.
Dear Samantha,
Check out the website of Ron de Bruin. He has a great set of macro's and free add-in that can help you with this issue.
http://rondebruin.nl/win/s3/win006.htm
Tom
Hello, I have just found out that I made a mistake in my spreadsheet: I had a column of negative numbers, but one of them was positive (while it should have been negative). Is there a formula/system to avoid this?
Thanks.
Mariateresa
Yes, data validation. Values you denote would be between -1 and -999,999,999.
Hi,
Hiding any worksheet can be unhidden and messed around easily. I change the visibility in visual basic from -xlSheetVisible to -xlSheetVeryHidden. By this, even if you right click on sheets, you will be unable to find the hidden sheets.
Cool? I think so...
Very informative, Thanks
Is there a way to lock cells in an already protected worksheet.
(Thus the entire worksheet is protected, then the entire office can open it as read only but only a few users have the password to edit the file)
I would like an additional password or prompt box so these few users don't accidentally change formulas.
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I laughed out loud reading the 2nd solution about moving to marketing department and making ppts.
I've been using "technical" sheets for a long time already and depending on the audience it is hidden or not. I'm currently in my NO VBA mindset, so the very hidden option is no longer. Using sheets names like: TechnicalCodes; ExplicitVariables;SetUp; HeavyCalc seem to work to my experience as they send along a message "Don' t you mess-up here, you fool!". A "Read This" section or sheet however does not work!
Reading stuff on this site has helped me develop a good habit of using colors and themes to assist the end user in being well-behaved. In my book the best advise here, because it is about the user experience and not only about protection your own work.
For dashboards I get rid of tabs and scroll bars. Besides 2 exceptions, I need to come across a manager who can turn them on again without my help.
Seems that I forgot about protecting cells, sheets and workbooks altogether. Damn!
Thanks for the informative article Chandoo, I've been struggling with Excel lately. It's a powerful tool, but hard to learn for me.
Thanks Chandoo for sharing these excel sheet tips it helps me a lot to understand excel more.
Nice roundup, Chandoo! Here's one more I thought would be relevant:
For Excel 2013+, you can hide the ribbon, as shown in this animated gif: https://gridmaster.io/tips/hide-ribbon-excel-space
This will simplify the interface, making it less likely for people to accidentally make changes. 🙂
THANK YOU SIR
I'm better at Power BI thanks to you!