Do you have any Excel OCD habits?

[MrKowz]

We need another discussion thread! Do you have any Excel OCD habits? Do you find yourself always formatting things a certain way, setting up borders with specific thicknesses, etc?

Whenever I get a spreadsheet from a colleague that has no formats, I go insane. I have to put a thick border around anything that is meant to be looked at as a group (with thin borders between), any cell that is meant to be manually inputted I color with a light yellow. Any cell that is a formula output I color with light green, and any cell that is a macro output I color with light blue. Cells that are a "total" (sum, product, average, etc), I color in a light orange. Any dollar amounts, I have to put into Accounting Format.

Also, I hate... HATE HATE HATE HATE having things in Column A when it isn't a data table or if the number of rows used is less than what fits on my screen. When things bump up right against the left edge of the table, it makes me go bonkers. :D

For example... any time I get a spreadsheet that starts out looking like this:

Excel Workbook
	A	B
2	Interest Rate	6.50%
3	Years	2.00
4
5	Principal Amount	Accrued Value
6	1000	1134.23
7	2000	2268.45
8	3000	3402.68
9	4000	4536.90
10	5000	5671.13
11
12	Total	17013.38
Sheet1

Excel 2003

Cell Formulas
Range	Formula
B6	=A6*(1+$B$2)^$B$3
B7	=A7*(1+$B$2)^$B$3
B8	=A8*(1+$B$2)^$B$3
B9	=A9*(1+$B$2)^$B$3
B10	=A10*(1+$B$2)^$B$3
B12	=SUM(B6:B10)

I put it into something that looks like this (Imagine thick borders around the separate arrays):

Excel Workbook
	B	C
2	Interest Rate	6.50%
3	Years	2.00
4
5	Principal Amount	Accrued Value
6	$ 1,000.00	$ 1,134.23
7	$ 2,000.00	$ 2,268.45
8	$ 3,000.00	$ 3,402.68
9	$ 4,000.00	$ 4,536.90
10	$ 5,000.00	$ 5,671.13
11
12	Total	$ 17,013.38
Sheet1

Excel 2003




Also, with macros... any time I get code, the FIRST thing I do is go through and tier it so that it is easier to follow where loops, ifs, for statements, select cases begin/end.

 

[JamesW]

I too have to tier code, it drives me mental when I see it all lines up... Sometimes I tier it, show it to my colleagues who then go "ohhhh I see what I did wrong now!".

I also hate merged cells. I ALWAYS remove them... Trying to sort/reference an individual cell when one or more are merged? Good luck!

I ahve to agree with you on the formatting and borders... I usually use neutral colours, as most of my collegues seem to think dark blue and dark red cell background colours with bold black font work well together.

Then there's the freeze panes, which *apparently* work really well when put in the middle of a spreadsheet, or are done on a PC with a resolution of 1600*1200 and put where no one else can see them!

/Rant

 

[RoryA]

Usually the first thing I do with workbooks I receive is to remove all the formatting to avoid my retinas catching fire, and delete any pie or 3D (or, God forbid, both) charts. I then apply a custom colour palette, add minimal formatting - mostly a few grey borders at the top and bottom of tables, a bit of alignment and hiding decimal places (or showing in '000s) for most figures. A few cells bold where they are key outputs.
Then work out what it is I'm actually looking at.

 

[JamesW]

...to avoid my retinas catching fire

Love it.

 

[RoryA]

It does seem that when some of my colleagues refer to "eye-catching", it is short for "eye-catching-fire".
To be fair, though, some of their designs are quite useful for disguising the bad news contained therein.

 

[KestrylR]

Header row has GOT to be bold, text-wrapped & frozen. Column widths have to be adjusted & some data types really need to be centered in the column, while others have to be aligned to the right. And there needs to be a little splash of color somewhere, preferably in about the middle third of the screen. They send me these monotonous files that are nothing more than little black ants marching across the screen and then they wonder why it takes them so long to locate anything in it! GAH!!!!

 

[MrKowz]

Usually the first thing I do with workbooks I receive is to remove all the formatting to avoid my retinas catching fire, and delete any pie or 3D (or, God forbid, both) charts. I then apply a custom colour palette, add minimal formatting - mostly a few grey borders at the top and bottom of tables, a bit of alignment and hiding decimal places (or showing in '000s) for most figures. A few cells bold where they are key outputs.
Then work out what it is I'm actually looking at.

So this would drive you nuts? (Sorry, I had to)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v232/MrKowz/rorya.jpg

 

[JamesW]

It does seem that when some of my colleagues refer to "eye-catching", it is short for "eye-catching-fire".
To be fair, though, some of their designs are quite useful for disguising the bad news contained therein.

Combine that with having 65 columns and a zoom of 125% and you are not only blind, but you start having a fit.

"BUT IT LOOKS SO PRETTY.."

 

[RoryA]

That's not bad, but it needs more slices, datalabels and linking lines, and preferably some bezel and glow effects. And at least 8 different fonts.
It also reminds me of one of the only questions I've ever flatly refused to answer on a forum - when someone asked how to make cells flash...

 

[MrKowz]

It also reminds me of one of the only questions I've ever flatly refused to answer on a forum - when someone asked how to make cells flash...

Application.OnTime....... *stabs out own eyes*

I don't blame ya... better to save the world from those situations before they are created. You did the community a favor!