Do you have any Excel OCD habits?

[T. Valko]

Usually the first thing I do with workbooks I receive is to remove all the formatting to avoid my retinas catching fire

AMEN, brother!

Excel IS NOT an electronic coloring book for adults.

I absolutely loathe long sheet/file names.

 

[Michael M]

OH Yeah !!
Long file names AND repetition
An employee downloaded a folder to my server to take a look at his data.
A day for each !!! OMG !!!

RoadsData revision version 1 dated Friday 010110.xls
RoadsData revision version 2 dated Monday 040110.xls
RoadsData revision version 3 dated Tuesday 050110.xls
etc,etc,etc.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

Excel IS NOT an electronic coloring book for adults.

Haven't seen you around the board for a while. Welcome back!

I hate it when people create lists in hidden columns beside their summaries. By lists I mean for list validation. I believe the lists should be transparent in a separate sheet.

 

[Domski]

I believe the lists should be transparent in a separate sheet.

What's the fun in that? At least format them ;;; to make the hunt a little bit interesting

 

[RoryA]

If they are transparent, the hunt should already be interesting.

 

[Michael M]

Speaking of transparent......
I remember being caught with a VLOOKUP table that was setup in white font.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

Speaking of transparent......
I remember being caught with a VLOOKUP table that was setup in white font.

Ooooh I hate that. Workings that are given the same font colour as the fill colour.

 

[cornflakegirl]

Most everything in my sheets are centered in the columns.

I hate values that are centred - much harder to compare them!

I also tend to end up with quite long file names - I'm modelling business cases that go through several revisions, so tend to use the business case name, plus the main change that's been done, plus the date, to give us a fighting chance of working out which of the seven versions is the right one to look at.

 

[cornflakegirl]

Actually, there's one thing that I do that I hate (or at least think is pretty rubbish). I'm a big fan of data tables for displaying the results of High/Medium/Low scenarios for example, but I often want to show just the results part, and not the top row or leftmost column that drive the table (because they can be confusing for users who don't understand how the tables work). But since the tables have to be on the same sheet as the High/Medium/Low dropdown cell that drives them, I resort to hiding the extraneous bits. It's a messy solution that I don't like at all!

 

[crook_101]

Formatting, formatting and probably my biggest bugbear is "expert excel users in the Company"

Formatting 1 - colours burning eyes, previously mention I known, just thought that I would re-ignite this baby

Formatting 2 - Merged/hidden cells - if you are have a problem with your sheet and want me to look at it, i need to see all of it Merged cellls - spot one and run my unmerge all macro - this is such a pleasing thing, gives me a little warm feeling inside every time I use it

"expert excel users in the Company" - my blood pressure is rising already!! There are some people that really shouldn't have user rights for excel, they should be limited to paper and blunt crayons

/rant over