Now they pretty much do anything,” he says. “The flexibility has been growing a lot and doesn’t show signs of stopping. That’s why at Rows we built the spreadsheet that works as modern teams do — it’s data-rich, collaborative and crazy fast. You can build anything from everyday tasks and lead lists, to automated reports and internal tools”

What is the business impact of managing a marketing function with the wrong toolset & what would the impact be if you changed things? An inventory of pre-approved templates with documented approval and owners, categorized into levels of risk Imagine a world without spreadsheets; hard as this may be, they are not fit for the purpose you might be using them for. What in an ideal world would make your life easier? A web based tool, a built in communications platform, a central point for everyone to work in, from designers through to marketers, the ability to manage multiple output channels from one point? I love a good spreadsheet, I genuinely do, I’ve recently gone through a massive house renovation project and this was essential for managing the budget – there was also the huge satisfaction of when things came in under budget, my formula would automatically calculate a positive! (unfortunately this didn’t happen very often)Power Query: Within the Power Query Editor, there is a “Remove Rows” tool under the “Reduce Rows” section. Within that is an option to “Remove Duplicates”, which will look at your first column and only keep the first instance of any identical cell values. Ability to limit access to data, or spreadsheets, within a workbook that contains sensitive information. CFOs must have confidence in their data. They must know the exact data sources that feed into their financial reports — and their providence. The reality is that many finance departments don’t have visibility into data flows across their spreadsheet landscape. The data links between the different spreadsheets across departments, regions, and models are routinely undocumented and so impossible to view and accurately decipher. Dear spreadsheet — if it’s not too much to ask, can you make it easy for me to see where the data is coming from? Ultimately, in my mind, they’re used to organise chaos. A tornado of information is organised into rows, columns and sheets and suddenly, the world makes sense again.

II. Then, upload your spreadsheets and choose your join type. I typically choose Full Join (which Power Query will automatically choose for you), but you can play around and look at which preview fits your needs best. Enable role profile access to be provisioned per spreadsheet. Access could be edit or read-only. Copy/paste functionality could be a privilege rather than a default permission. Another option is using an API. As a starting place, here’s an article about how to read spreadsheets using an API in Python. With an API, we’re able to use other languages like Java or R as well!

Reasons to buy

A graphical representation of the interrelationships within a workbook would be really useful. I know I can trace precedents — but it’s a horrible process 🥱 Can you think of another system in finance that doesn’t have access controls built in? For good reason, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) requires that all organisations should behave ethically and limit access to financial data. Data breaches and leaks are not uncommon, and can lead to significant financial loss for a company — recently evidenced by the FinCEN leaks in the US. It’s not uncommon for spreadsheets to proliferate across an organisation. with work becoming more decentralized and teams working remotely, I’m willing to bet there are multiple copies of every spreadsheet hanging over the metaverse. And yet, there is no inventory or repository kept of all spreadsheets in use. Ability to have real-time dialogue between team members within a workbook with mention functionality. I want to stay in flow when I’m in the spreadsheet zone 🙏

Andreas Jonsson, cofounder and chief executive of LinkedIn analytics app Shield, says spreadsheets can save you crucial time and money in the early days of a startup.

I love spreadsheets! I genuinely do. It may possibly be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever admitted to. Maybe it’s the IKEA effect, having invested 20 years honing vlookup skills, formatting pivot tables, and choosing just the right graph to make my financial data mean something to someone, or maybe I just like the feeling of sinking into that comfortable spreadsheet memory foam. Don’t get me wrong, my spreadsheets are far from perfect, but I just can’t walk away.

If you’re into coding, working with Excel in your programs can be really fun! The most common way to connect with Excel is using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is what most Microsoft Office programs are programmed with. There are many resources available online but here’s a great starter. I know how wierd it sounds to say “I love spreadsheets!”. I mean, you don’t hear people saying things like “I love Word documents!”, or, “I love JPEGS!” do you?!Just mentioning Excel, spreadsheets or workbooks is often enough to send most people to sleep. If they do manage to stay awake, they’ll want to change the topic of conversation. Although, if their only experience with spreadsheets is what we were taught at school, I’d be the same so I totally get it. After a week of extensive research compiling offers from major banks and credit card companies, I sent my sister an Excel spreadsheet breaking down her options,” he says. “Soon, that spreadsheet was forwarded widely outside of my family and friends. That’s when I realised there was a real shopability problem in financial services where consumers had to sift through banks’ dense materials for information.” My love for you grows... because you save me time and money So, spreadsheets — while I 💓 you, there are some areas we need to work on. I went ahead and made a list (I hope you’ll forgive me 🤨!)