There are plenty of tutorials about working inside spreadsheet cells: creating formulae, finding ways to extract elusive data, etc. However, some of the best Data Management attention is spent outside of the spreadsheet cells: development of the overall file. So …

5 Spreadsheet Development Ideas that are Fun & Games Until …

Linking workbooks
was Fun & Games until …

Someone moved one of the workbooks to a different folder and broke all the links

Poor Spreadsheet Development

He thought his 3D graphics were the shiznit until his mother couldn’t open the spreadsheet without crashing Excel.

Saving several large Pivot Tables in a workbook
was Fun & Games
until …

The file size ballooned to a size too big to email and some users couldn’t even open the file

Beautiful bold 3D charts
were Fun & Games until …

The spreadsheet’s performance slowed to a clumsy crawl

Lots of VBA Code and little consideration for the end-user
was Fun & Games until …

The novice owner of the process renamed a tab from ‘Clients‘ to ‘Accounts‘ and now the macros looking for ‘Clients‘ don’t work

Several hundred VLOOKUPs
was Fun & Games until …
The document used so much of the system resources that it frequently crashed Excel and any open documents.

Don’t be like the guy in the picture. Develop good spreadsheets and your mother won’t beat you with a wooden spoon.

As always, I invite you: go on out there into the world and keep that data clean.