Geekgirl's Plain English Computing

What makes a good spreadsheet? Two things: good design and good data.

This may sound obvious, but it’s all too easy to dive into creating a spreadsheet without putting much thought into its design. And a poorly designed spreadsheet is bound to make it harder to enter valid data. Without valid data, your spreadsheet will never yield useful results.

Good design doesn’t mean making your spreadsheet look good – although spreadsheet appearance can definitely aid in usability and readability. Good spreadsheet design consists of organising your data logically and ensuring that all your formulae are correct.

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While word processing programs are the most commonly used office application and browsers are probably the most commonly used application of all, much of the success of personal computers is due to spreadsheets. In 1979, two blokes – Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston – developed the first spreadsheet. Their creation was called VisiCalc and it [...]

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I sometimes wonder whether Microsoft spends so much on its programming budget it has little left over to spend on designers. This thought often crosses my mind when working with Office sample files, templates and styles. Take, for example, the auto-formats supplied with pre-2007 versions of Excel. Who designed these things? Not only are they [...]

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When you refer to a cell in an Excel formula, you can use any of three different ways of referring to that cell, known as relative, absolute and mixed references. Relative cell references are the most commonly used. A relative cell reference in a formula is based on the position of the formula’s cell relative [...]

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