You open the Excel file your colleague just sent, and within seconds, you know… this is going to be a nightmare. Where do you even begin?

Good news. There’s a smarter way to tackle this mess.

This week, I’m sharing some cool tips from one of my favorite presentations at the Global Excel Summit - because I bet you didn’t know all of these!

Also in Between the Sheets:

• more webinar dates
• small update with a big impact in mobile Outlook
• AI bots still struggling with the facts

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🔎 Top Tips for Workbook Audit

Ian Schnoor is the Executive Director of Financial Modeling Institute in Toronto, Canada. He's had plenty of experience reviewing other people's work.

At the Summit, he shared his "Swiss army knife" methodology - a reliable approach for spotting errors.

He applies it to reviewing financial models, where mistakes can cost millions.

But the approach can also be useful in other scenarios. Think reports, budgets, inventories... Or whenever your colleague sends you a complex Excel file asking why the formula doesn't work.

So, how to check for (potential) errors?

Start with...

Drone view 🦅

Zoom out the sheet to 30-40% for a bird's-eye view.

You're looking for "floating islands" - isolated values or calculations you might have missed otherwise. Scroll through the sheet to map its structure and catch anything unusual.

Pro tip: Named ranges also become visible when you zoom out like this 😉

Camouflage 🥷

Excel users like to think they're sneaky. You just have to be sneakier.

Sometimes they deliberately place things out of sight.

They can turn the font color white to match the background. Or they hide entire sheets.

You probably know how to find hidden sheets. Right-click on any tab and select Unhide.

Ah, but have you ever heard of VERY hidden sheets?

They don't show up when you unhide the normal way. But they can still include values referenced in formulas.

To check for them, open the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F11).

There, you can see all the sheets in the open workbook. As well as control their visibility in the Properties window.

In addition to Visible and Hidden, you get the Very Hidden option.

Change the setting to Visible to take a peek at the top secret sheet.

Just revert the change once you're satisfied the very hidden content won't cause any issues.

Landmines 💣

Once you know where all the data is, time to check it.

What you should avoid are hardcoded values where you expect formulas.

This can throw off all calculations.

Easy way to check for it - Go To Special.

Press F5 (or Ctrl+G) > Special (Alt+S) > Constants > OK.

All the hardcoded numbers in the sheet will be selected. You can apply a cell fill color to easily spot them.

You can also select the range and use the shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+\ (backslash).

Formation 👯

Go to Special > Constants won't work for numbers hardcoded inside formulas.

Best practice? Store constants in labeled cells so formulas update automatically.

But not everyone follows the rules - so let Excel do the work.

To catch inconsistent formulas:

1. Select a row/column.
2. Press F5 > Alt+S for Go To Special, and choose Row (or Column) differences.
3. Excel highlights formulas that break the pattern.

Shortcut: use Ctrl+\ (backslash) to find inconsistencies instantly.

Next time you’re faced with a messy spreadsheet, you’ll know exactly where to start.

Thanks to Ian for sharing his tricks!

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Work Smarter in 2025: Upcoming webinar

Did you miss the December & January webinars?

We're adding more dates to give you a chance to discover 3 Excel secrets to work smarter in 2025.

If you’re using Excel like it’s still 2015… you’re already behind.

Excel has evolved - have you?

In the webinar, you'll learn three powerful strategies to work faster and stay ahead.

This time, we're offering two dates to choose from:

• Thursday, 20th February 2025, 6 pm CET
• Tuesday, 25th February 2025, 6 pm CET

👉 Register Free​

(If you can't attend live, register for any date to get the replay).

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🤓 Geeky News

📧 Minimize email drafts in Outlook for Android and iOS

You can now minimize Outlook email drafts on mobile. Whether you want to quickly grab a link, check your calendar or look up a detail from an earlier email, simply click on the minimize button. It will lower the email to the bottom of the screen but won't close it. Simply tap on it to bring it back.

No more retrieving interrupted emails from drafts. Keep your flow and switch tasks as needed.

The feature is currently available in Android Beta and iOS TestFlight but should soon roll out to all users.

🤖 ChatGPT Search without an account

OpenAI has made ChatGPT Search available to everyone without an account.

The search tool works like a standard search engine. It runs in the background to deliver the most recent information whenever you're using ChatGPT. But you can also initiate a manual web search by clicking the search button.

Looks like OpenAI is making a bold move to compete with Google. Could this change how we find information forever?

🤖 Google Gemini works across multiple apps

Google’s AI assistant Gemini can carry out tasks across multiple apps in a single prompt.

For example, you can conduct a search, save the results to the calendar, and share via a message.

The multi-app support includes Google apps as well as some third-party apps, like WhatsApp, Spotify, and Samsung's productivity apps.

🤖 BBC study on AI chatbots

Think AI chatbots are reliable? Think again.

Definitely not when reporting the news.

​A BBC study found that over half of AI-generated answers contained major issues - including outright factual errors. Yikes.

Other issues included inability to differentiate between opinion and fact, editorializing, and missing context (full study results).

If you want accurate information, you need to read the articles, or the books, yourself.

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👏 Power Stories

I left the Global Excel Summit inspired by the speakers (BTW - you can purchase the recordings from their page).

But you know what excited me even more?

Seeing my session help Patrick apply new strategies right away.

If you haven't heard about REGEX functions yet, why not give them a go. Check out my video.

RegEx patterns may seem scary. But they're nowhere near as scary as some of the formulas you had to use before to solve the same problems. And this is one area where AI can actually be helpful. 😉

See you next week,

Leila

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