We’ve all met a Frankenmodel. 80 tabs. Names like “v3_final_FINAL_revised”. Dead sheets stitched together from old projects. Formulas that only work on a full moon. It lumbers from deal to deal, struggling under the weight of broken links and hidden hardcodes. Nobody wants to touch it, but somehow it lives on. If this creature is lurking in your files: You can’t tame it. You have to take it apart and rebuild something clean. …And finally put the monster to rest. Tell us, which excel monsters do you most want to slay?
Labelling anything "final" is just tempting fate...
Rather too many to list in one post but to give you a hint: - in a previous role a colleague (I think this was James Fieldhouse) once commented "I don't hardcode things into formulas anymore because I know what Angela will do to me if I do." (am thinking of having this as my epitaph!) - having to track through what feels like (and in some cases is!) hundreds of formula links to work my way back to the underlying assumptions - inconsistent use of timescales between sheets (I find it harder to review if Jan 2026 is in column K on Sheet1, Z on Sheet 2 and AB on Sheet3) - not using freeze frames effectively. ( if I scroll up/down, left/right then I prefer to know which period and cost category I am in) With each of these there is no guarantee that the existence of the monster will guarantee an error. Or indeed that a monster-free spreadsheet will be correspondingly error free!
Hidden circular references that only appear at 2am during a deadline crunch… that’s my Excel monster
Director SA Operations
1wLinks to objects that can’t be broken using native excel, a name manager with 100’s of ref errror names, outdated comments with those dreaded yellow labels all over……. Oh the horror 😱!!!!