Powell, Baker, & Lawson (2009)1% of all formulas in operational spreadsheets are in error.
Bishop & McDaid (2007)The quality and reliability of spreadsheets is known to be poor.
Chadwick (2002)Spreadsheet errors... a great, often unrecognised, risk to corporate decision making & financial integrity.
Kulesz & Ostberg (2013)Spreadsheets are more fault-prone than other software.
Ross (1996)A lot of decisions are being made on the basis of some bad numbers.
Irons (2003)Spreadsheet errors are pervasive, stubborn, ubiquitous and complex.
Howard (2005)Spreadsheets... pose a greater threat to your business than almost anything you can imagine.
Abraham, et al (2005)Spreadsheets contain errors at an alarmingly high rate.
Caulkins, Morrison, & Weidemann (2008)Spreadsheets are commonly used and commonly flawed.
Nixon & O'Hara (2010)It is now widely accepted that errors in spreadsheets are both common and potentially dangerous.
Paine (2001)Spreadsheets are alarmingly error-prone to write.
Burnett & Myers (2014)The software that end users are creating... is riddled with errors.
Abreu, et al (2015)Despite being staggeringly error prone, spreadsheets are a highly flexible programming environment.
Mireault & Gresham (2015)Spreadsheets are often hard, if not impossible, to understand.
Panko & Ordway (2005)Most large spreadsheets have dozens or even hundreds of errors.
Panko (2013)It is irrational to expect large error-free spreadsheets.
Panko (1999)Every study, without exception, has found error rates much higher than organizations would wish to tolerate.
Sajaniemi (1998)The results given by spreadsheets are often just wrong.
Chen & Chan (2000)Spreadsheets are easy to use and very hard to check.
Colbenz (2005)Errors in spreadsheets are as ubiquitous as spreadsheets themselves.
Price (2006)The untested spreadsheet is as dangerous and untrustworthy as an untested program.
Panko (2015)Research on spreadsheet errors is substantial, compelling, and unanimous.
Cunha, et al (2011)Spreadsheets are notoriously error-prone.
Rust, et al (2006)Spreadsheets have a notoriously high number of faults.
Beaman, et al (2005)Errors in spreadsheets... result in incorrect decisions being made and significant losses incurred.
Csernoch & Biro (2013)Studies have shown that there is a high incidence of errors in spreadsheets.
Abraham & Erwig (2007)Spreadsheet errors have resulted in huge financial losses.
Panko (2007)The issue is not whether there is an error but how many errors there are and how serious they are.
Bock (2016)Spreadsheet development must embrace extensive testing in order to be taken seriously as a profession.
Dunn (2010)Spreadsheets are extraordinarily and unacceptably prone to error.
Caulkins, Morrison, & Weidemann (2006)Your spreadsheets may be disasters in the making.
Panko & Halverson (1996)Every study that has looked for errors has found them... in considerable abundance.
Durusau & Hunting (2015)Spreadsheets are dangerous to their authors and others.
Raffensperger (2001)Never assume a spreadsheet is right, even your own.
Reschenhofer & Matthes (2015)Spreadsheet shortcomings can significantly hamper an organization's business operation.
Murphy (2007)60% of large companies feel 'Spreadsheet Hell' describes their reliance on spreadsheets.
Mireault (2015)Developing an error-free spreadsheet has been a problem since the beginning of end-user computing.
Teo & Tan (1999)Most executives do not really check or verify the accuracy or validity of [their] spreadsheets...
Galletta, et al (1993)Even obvious, elementary errors in very simple, clearly documented spreadsheets are... difficult to find.
Panko (2008)94% of the 88 spreadsheets audited in 7 studies have contained errors.
Sakal, et al (2015)Overconfidence is one of the most substantial causes of spreadsheet errors.
Abreu, et al (2015)Spreadsheets can be viewed as a highly flexible programming environment for end users.
Nixon & O'Hara (2010)Spreadsheet errors are still the rule rather than the exception.
Hermans & van der Storm (2015)Spreadsheets are the most popular live programming environments, but they are also notoriously fault-prone.
Miller (2005)Untested spreadsheets are riddled with errors.
Caulkins, Morrison, & Weidemann (2006)People tend to believe their spreadsheets are more accurate than they really are.
Panko (2014)Despite overwhelming and unanimous evidence... companies have continued to ignore spreadsheet error risks.
Kruck & Sheetz (2001)...few incidents of spreadsheet errors are made public and these are usually not revealed by choice.
Krishna, et al (2001)Programmers exhibit unwarranted confidence in the correctness of their spreadsheets.
Ayalew (2007)A significant proportion of spreadsheets have severe quality problems.
Connexion is a collection of the most useful and interesting spreadsheet-related articles from the web.
We review more than 200 websites and blogs to collect the best articles on tools, tips, and techniques that help you to improve your spreadsheets. Each article here is just a snippet — click on the title to open the full article.
Number of Connexion articles: 284
"Oh My God" Excel formulas not working in my report. Sounds familiar right? If so, don't worry, you are just one among many Excel users who face this problem very often.
To avoid all this hassle, we have written this in-depth article covering most of the reasons for Excel formulas not working. And how to fix them.
10 reasons for Excel errors:
Solver Max, a sister company of iⁿ, provides a collection of optimization model examples using the Solver and OpenSolver add-ins.
Models include:
The BBC reports that a "badly thought-out use of Microsoft's Excel software was the reason nearly 16,000 coronavirus cases went unreported in England."
Although Excel has been the target of much blame, and even contempt, the issue is much deeper than that.
As two authors from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) point out, the issue isn't Excel as such, but rather the way that we use Excel:
If you work with formulas in Excel, sooner or later you will encounter the problem where Excel formulas don't work at all (or give the wrong result).
In this article, I will highlight those common issues that are likely the cause of your Excel formulas not working.
This tutorial covers:
Modelers across the globe are beginning to recognise financial modeling as a profession.
Despite strong support for professional standards many modeling teams do not implement them rigorously and a suprising number of teams do not have consistent quality control systems in place.
Key conclusions from "2019 Financial Modeling Profession Survey":
Introducing XLOOKUP
, a replacement for VLOOKUP
and HLOOKUP
.
The main benefits of XLOOKUP
:
VLOOKUP
which defaults to True
for the 4th argument).VLOOKUP
in 2018.XLOOKUP
returns a range instead of VLOOKUP
returning a value.One of the cardinal rules of Excel is don't key-in a value into a formula if that value could change.
Tracking the value down could be problematic if you need to change the value. Tables can be the solution to avoiding keyed-in values.
Often when building even a simple financial model, unit conversion is necessary.
For example, you sell 437,911 widgets at £12.50 each. However, in your output summary sheet for senior management, do you really wish to show that the revenue earned is £5,473,888 or is it more likely that you will display this figure as £5.5m?
Most modellers will modify their number with a calculation such as =437911*12.50/1000000
. But using this approach poses the danger of making a mistake in your additions by adding £ and £millions.
By using a custom number format, rather than modifying values, you will never again add or subtract numbers of different orders of magnitude.