Do's & Don'ts of Excel Spreadsheet Design (with Examples)

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Crafting an Excel workbook? Get essential tips for both structural design and visual appeal. Ideal for anyone looking to create efficient, professional-looking Excel reports.

There are two main aspects when you design an Excel spreadsheet:
1. Excel Workbook Structure
2. Visual Design of Each Excel Worksheet

✨ Key Highlights:
▪️ Structured Tab Organization: Keep raw data, analysis, calculations, and change logs in separate tabs. Each sheet should have a clear, explainable purpose.
▪️ Thorough Documentation: Include an instructions tab, especially if the workbook is for collaborative use. Define abbreviations and outline each tab's purpose.
▪️ File Recovery Practices: Utilize Excel's file recovery options but also maintain backup copies for extra safety.
▪️ Print-Ready Design: Ensure your workbook is print-friendly. Check print previews, add headers, footers, and page numbers for complete, organized printouts.
▪️ Consistent Color Coding: Use colors strategically to differentiate between input cells and calculated fields. Ensure readability with good color contrast.
▪️ Effective Formatting: Invest time in organizing and decluttering your workbook. It enhances understanding and appreciation of your work.

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Tip Number 1: Dont use Excel for internal reporting if you deal with important data. Excel templates are very vulnerable and tend to be misused by the reporters. Use web-based templates created by professionals.
Tip Number 2: Master Pivot Tables, Power Query and Database connections. Those are your best friends for every imaginable real-world task. If you don't use these techniques, then every singe change in your template becomes a tedious and irreversable manual process.
Tip Number 3: Cook in the kitchen and eat in the dining room. If your goal is to analyse some figures, then dont try to improve the looks of your raw data. Design it as an efficient fact table instead. If your goal to make a good looking report, then nly polish the outcome table. Conceal or totally remove your raw data from the file, before presenting it to the end-consumer.
Tip Number 4: Those who practice hiding columns and/or merging cells are sinners, who land in their own circle in Excel-hell. These practices breach the file structure and turn both error search and automated file processing to a nightmare.
Tip Number 5: Colors are fine, but values are better. If you highlight something important using a color, your message can be missed if there is a lot data to look at. Why not build a column with your points of interest and add a nice pivot slicer or a filter to it instead? This way the important items can be found easily.
Tip Number 6: Define your own tips.

alexgry

Dear Leila, Once again may the Good Lord richly bless you

robertakwasiadjei

Thanks Liela . liked the saying 'You eat with your eyes first' very well goes with the context of the video.

vishaldivakar

All are my favorites and things I always strive to achieve...I take pride in a well structured workbook such as these suggestions. Nothing peeves me more than receiving a file not already prepared for printing or not well organized for me as a consumer...

pt

plz make a video for fetching various results from a webpage by providing various inputs to the cells from excel and putting it into respective values into the cell of the excel. e.g I have two columns (A1 and B1) whose value are 5 & 10 respectively, now in te website I have to put the values to resptive field say 1st Number and 2nd Number and the result in the page says 15 and now I want to put the value "15" to my excel cell no C1. And this should be repeated till my last row.

sksubhenduu

One of my 'must do(s)' when distributing a workbook - LOCK DOWN your formulas to prevent changes. Also, I regularly use the 'hide formula' function & lock the cell.
Learned the hard way - ppl really do like to fiddle with the calculations, etc...

IamChevalier

Hi Leila, I have been watching your videos lately and they are very helpful. A question for you, I have tried to find an answer googling but I haven't been able to find out an answer or fix. I have a custom sorting list and it works fine if a create a pivot table in the same workbook. But if I import or connect data using New Query From File option under Data ribbon to another workbook and try to create a pivot table, it sorts the data alphabetically. I want to keep the data and dashboard separately i.e. in two different workbooks. Any suggestion.

maqsoodulhassan

I’ll add to the list: #9. Freeze panels for large set of data.#10. Save file with active cell where your relevant data starts (begining of the document, usually the top left corner sheet) on EACH SHEET.
Under #8 my must does are:. (a) For data pivoted, I spend time removing the default pivot format; (b) I remove the grid lines for any data summaries, but do leave it on on sheets with raw data;

signalmas

I recommend learning Python and replacing all the spreadsheets (and coworkers) with a few lines of code

jordanhyatt

Very helpfull your video mam 🙏🏻
Pleased make more video about its topic please
Highly requested 🙏🏻

dalveerdalveer

The title of this item is Do's & Don'ts of Excel Spreadsheet Design.
Don'ts is correct. Do's should be Dos (no apostrophe).

frederickmaskell

any video for creating excel for selling to customers with password protection and serial key?

abhaykumar-cdgu

Please madam Leila, how can I get videos about ACCA f1, 2 and 3?? Thanks

westernugmedia.

what if i have a databook with 100 sheets, and i need a worksheet divider that separates each 10 sheet. how can i go on about that. i need a design idea for it

abdullaalturabi