Do you have any Excel OCD habits?

[JamesW]

Thank God for powerpoint (I never thought I'd say that...)

 

[arkusM]

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.

You would benefit from the Auto Indentor in my signature. Not my program but an awesome tool.

 

[TinaP]

All code must be indented properly. No excuses.

Red is used for critical problems and nothing else.

Mint green or light yellow for input cells that still require information.

Merged Cells are the spawn of the devil and will be summarily unmerged.

If it is a list of data, absolutely no rows may be skipped. I don't care how pretty it looks, it screws up the pivot table and the macro. First offense will result in a stern talking to; second offense, a slap on the hand; each offense thereafter, a sound whuppin'.

No fonts over 12 points in the main area.

Do not put a title in row 1 and then repeat for each page of the worksheet. That is what Headers are for. Learn it. Use it.

Do not, under any circumstances, let me see you put a number in a box and another number in a second box, then go to your adding machine and add the two numbers together and then, finally, put the total in yet another box. Excel knows how to add, subtract, multiply, divide and a boatload of other things. If you don't know how to do it, ask me.

 

[Atroxell]

Many of my OCD activities are listed already, so I am just going to mention my latest: USE THE WORKBOOK PROPERTIES!!!!

I have too often seen people present "their" reports only to discover later from someone else that the report was built by the someone else. My response is always, "Did you fill out the properties?"

Although anyone can edit the properties as the workbook gets passed down the line, most people don't even think of them.

I was once present when an objection regarding ownership to a new report was stated and the original owner (and objector) proved it was theirs by asking to see the Properties of the workbook. There was their name, nice and clear! I can assure you that at least 10 people learned how to edit the workbook properties within hours of that meeting. Very embarrassing for the perp as well....

It helps to have some description of the data source in the comments. I often include the query name and any other critical parameters for creating the report, just in case I forget.

And it helps (sometimes) to fill out the keywords when you're searching for that workbook you worked on several months back but cannot find...

 

[cornflakegirl]

My main irrational hates are underlining and headings where the initial letter of every word is capitalised. I'm also not fond of negative numbers in red.

A colleague of mine is trying to get us to standardise the output pages of the models that we produce. Very sensible idea, except that his proposed standard had the main body of output numbers with the background cell colour either bright orange or bright yellow. I was really quite rude to him.

 

[Domski]

All of the above!!!. My worst is the nasty format SAP exports reports in. If I'm using someone else's machine you should see me frantically pressing Ctrl+Shift+Q trying to banish it with no success.

Explaining to people that having a worksheet for every supplier/employee/day of the week etc really isn't a good idea if you want to do anything useful with the data in the future.

I could go on...and on...and on...

 

[sous2817]

Explaining to people that having a worksheet for every supplier/employee/day of the week etc really isn't a good idea if you want to do anything useful with the data in the future.

I think I should make this my work email signature!

One thing that gets me is file size. I love getting 10MB workbooks through email, typically done by the department "excel expert" that's full of entire row and column highlighting, sheets dedicated to holding data for convoluted 3-d pie charts on entirely different sheets, lists conveniently tucked away in cell ZZ1000:ZZ1002 (so no one will see them!).

Last one I can think of...password protected sheets when it's really not needed...especially when you get an 'urgent' email to fix it before their 9am performance review but they neglected to send you their password.

 

[Domski]

Another one that probably shouldn't annoy me is omitting optional arguments from worksheet functions such as match and vlookup. I know they're optional but the amount of people I see using vlookup and not even knowing there's a 4th argument and wondering why they aren't getting the results they expect. The even scarier thing is how long it takes to spot this sometimes.

Dom

 

[SydneyGeek]

Last one I can think of...password protected sheets when it's really not needed...especially when you get an 'urgent' email to fix it before their 9am performance review but they neglected to send you their password.

Yeah... love that. Several years ago someone posted a simple code snippet that cracks worksheet passwords. It's come in useful more than once.
Then you can send it back with a *new* password and wait for the response...

Denis

 

[sous2817]

I'm talking about the passwords to just open the file...I usually wait 30 minutes and then reply with something like:

"I've guessed my wife's name, both my children, town where I was born, the best man at my wedding, my mother's maiden name, my pet's name, and favorite sports team. None of these worked. Have any ideas?"