Related papers: Hands-Off Spreadsheets
Most spreadsheet surveys both for reporting use and error focus on the practical application of the spreadsheet in a particular industry. Typically these studies will illustrate that a particular percentage of spreadsheets are used for…
Because spreadsheets have a large and growing importance in real-world work, their contents need to be controlled and validated. Generally spreadsheets have been difficult to verify, since data and executable information are stored…
Few major commercial or economic decisions are made today which are not underpinned by analysis using spreadsheets. It is virtually impossible to avoid making mistakes during their drafting and some of these errors remain, unseen and…
There is no denying that spreadsheets have become critical for all operational processes including financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, and analysis. Microsoft Excel has essentially become a scratch pad and a data browser that can…
Since the calculation engine of Excel was the subject of a major upgrade to accommodate Dynamic Arrays in 2018 there has been a series of seismic changes to the art of building spreadsheet solutions. This paper will show the ad-hoc end user…
Spreadsheets are widely used in various fields to do large numerical analysis. While several companies have relied on spreadsheets for decades, data scientists are going in the direction of using scientific programming languages such as…
Spreadsheets offer a supremely successful and intuitive means of processing and exchanging numerical content. Its intuitive ad-hoc nature makes it hugely popular for use in diverse areas including business and engineering, yet these very…
Heavy use of spreadsheets by organisations bears many potential risks such as errors, ambiguity, data loss, duplication, and fraud. In this paper these risks are briefly outlined along with their available mitigation methods such as:…
All users of spreadsheets struggle with the problem of errors. Errors are thought to be prevalent in spreadsheets, and in some instances they have cost organizations millions of dollars. In a previous study of 50 operational spreadsheets we…
Spreadsheets offer a supremely successful democratisation platform, placing the manipulation and presentation of numbers within the grasp of users that have little or no mathematical expertise or IT experience. What appears to be almost…
Thanks to the enormous flexibility they provide, spreadsheets are considered a priceless blessing by many end-users. Many spreadsheets, however, contain errors which can lead to severe consequences in some cases. To manage these risks,…
Previous spreadsheet inspection experiments have had human subjects look for seeded errors in spreadsheets. In this study, subjects attempted to find errors in human-developed spreadsheets to avoid the potential artifacts created by error…
It is now widely accepted that errors in spreadsheets are both common and potentially dangerous. Further research has taken place to investigate how frequently these errors occur, what impact they have, how the risk of spreadsheet errors…
In traditional usability studies, researchers talk to users of tools to understand their needs and challenges. Insights gained via such interviews offer context, detail, and background. Due to costs in time and money, we are beginning to…
Modern spreadsheet systems can be used to implement complex spreadsheet applications including data sheets, customized user forms and executable procedures written in a scripting language. These applications are often developed by…
Recognizing that the use of spreadsheets within finance will likely not subside in the near future, this paper discusses a major barrier that is preventing more organizations from adopting enterprise spreadsheet management programs. But…
This paper discusses spreadsheets documentation and new means to achieve this end by using Excel's built-in "Comment" function. By structuring comments, they can be used as an essential tool to fully explain spreadsheet. This will greatly…
Spreadsheets are ubiquitous in business with the financial sector particularly heavily reliant on the technology. It is known that the level of spreadsheet error can be high and that it is often necessary to review spreadsheets based on a…
Spreadsheets are widely used, and studies have shown that most end-user spreadsheets contain nontrivial errors. To improve end-users productivity, recent research proposes the use of a model-driven engineering approach to spreadsheets. In…
Among the multiple causes of high error rates in spreadsheets, lack of proper training and of deep understanding of the computational model upon which spreadsheet computations rest might not be the least issue. The paper addresses this…