IN fluence charts how to easily gain a powerful overview of your excel spreadsheet model

Preface Books about Excel don’t tell you how to gain an overview of the model in a spreadsheet They talk about how to cut and paste, how to write formulas, and how to use special formulas But you know how all these formulas are organized in a spreadsheet model? Normally, people will have a very hard time doing this, as they have to look at formulas one at a time This unique Excel book shows you how you can quickly and easily gain an overview of an Excel model, with just a few clicks The automatically generated overview has many great uses, as illustrated in the book This book is meant for all types of Excel users It is meant for both novice and expert users Whether you create spreadsheets or you work with other people’s spreadsheets, this book will be very useful for you This book is especially useful for people who check other people’s spreadsheets If you are a spreadsheet teacher, a spreadsheet auditor or simply a manager who gets spreadsheet reports, this book is a must read Even if you read only your own spreadsheets, this book gives you better and more efficient methods to look through your own spreadsheets Copyright@2017 All rights preserved H C Chan About the author The author has a PhD from the University of British Columbia He has teaching and research experience with spreadsheets He taught a course on decision modeling with spreadsheets, for a few years, at the National University of Singapore He also provided specialized training about spreadsheet error detection to practitioners His research about spreadsheet users has been published at international journals and conferences Contents Introduction to Influence Charts Example 1: Interest Calculation Example 2: A summation of expenses Uses of Influence Charts An Under-utilized but Powerful Tool Precedents and Dependents Trace Precedents Trace Dependents A quick display of immediate precedents Box arrow for a range of precedent cells Wrong or Missing Connections: A Common Error Example 1: A payroll model Example 2: An economics model An Enhanced Influence Chart: VisualCheck Tracing Precedents / Dependents for Multiple Cells Identification of Inputs, Intermediate Variables and Outputs in Influence Charts Separated Components Use of Cell Colors to find Errors Example 1: A payroll model Example 2: An economics model Gaining an Overview: A Personal Budget Example Special Cases for Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents Offset formula in Excel Vlookup & Hlookup formulas Formulas that cross worksheets A Special Chapter for Spreadsheet Teachers Influence Chart helps What-If Analysis Conclusion References Appendix A How we add VisualCheck to Excel? Appendix B VisualCheck Menu Introduction to Influence Charts “More often than not just one person in a company has the knowledge of how the financial spreadsheet models are constructed Other people are unable to understand and therefore check the analysis The potential for errors is massive.” The Telegraph[1] 2015 This book focuses on one main topic: the influence chart An influence chart is a very powerful tool An influence chart Ayalew, Yirsaw "A visualization-based approach for improving spreadsheet quality." Proceedings of the Warm Up Workshop for ACM/IEEE ICSE 2010 ACM, 2009 Bishop, Brian, and Kevin McDaid "An empirical study of end-user behaviour in spreadsheet error detection & correction." arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.3479 (2008) Chan, H C., C Ying, and C B Peh "Strategies and visualization tools for enhancing user auditing of spreadsheet models." Information and Software Technology 42.15 (2000): 1037-1043 Chan, Hock Chuan "Spreadsheet visualization effects on error correction." 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Omega 29.5 (2001): 445-456 Appendix A How to add VisualCheck to Excel? There are many “add-ins” software or applications Excel has very detailed guides on how to add in an “add-ins” application VisualCheck is an “addins” application The steps are as follow: Download the VisualCheck software into any directory in your computer Open the file with Excel 2013 (or Excel 2010) A new add-ins menu should appear in Excel Close Excel Do not delete the file for VisualCheck You can use Excel as per normal The commands from VisualCheck are in the add-ins menu for you to use with any Excel file The first time a VisualCheck button is used in a file, Excel may prompt you to enable the macros The add-ins will be there until you remove it For more information about add-ins and steps to add or remove addins to your spreadsheet, please see this link from Microsoft support (Add or remove add-ins) Appendix B VisualCheck Menu The VisualCheck menu is shown below Figure 56 VisualCheck Menu VisualCheck has the following menu buttons, listed from left to right as shown in the above figure Multi-Precedents Excel’s “Trace Precedents” works only when one cell is selected, Multi-Precedents works on any number of select cells, e.g., a single cell, a row / column of cells, a block of cells, or even an entire worksheet Where applicable, every click shows the next level of precedents Remove Multi-Precedents Every click reduces the arrows for the furthest level of precedents Multi-Dependents This works in the same way as Excel’s “Trace Dependents”, but allow many cells to be selected Each click shows the next level of dependents Remove Multi-Dependents Each click removes the arrows from the furthest level of dependents In-Block Pre Dep This button, with a square enclosure, has the special ability of showing precedent/dependent arrows among cells only in the selected block This allows us to focus within a selected block of cells Separated Components (or separated blocks) This button with a red and a blue blocks identifies separated components within a selected area (or for the entire worksheet if the selection is the entire worksheet) End-Points This button identifies the cell types (input, processing, output and stand-alone types) and color them accordingly The cell types are based on the cells selected It is best to use this button for the entire worksheet Top-Down-Left-Right Check This button identify arrows that flow upwards, or from right to left Experts recommend that a model should be designed so that arrows flow downward, or from left to right, wherever possible Erase Tracers This yellow “eraser” button removes all arrows and cell colors 10 Question Mark This button provides more information about VisualCheck [1] Stupid errors in spreadsheets could lead to Britain's next corporate disaster, by Rebecca Burn-Callander [2] The software works for Windows Excel 2013 and 2010 It may not work for older versions of Excel It is the product of spreadsheet research by the author and others at the National University of Singapore ... chart This book shows how we can easily and quickly draw an influence chart from an Excel model The automatically generated influence chart shows how the Excel model is really organized An influence...Preface Books about Excel don’t tell you how to gain an overview of the model in a spreadsheet They talk about how to cut and paste, how to write formulas, and how to use special formulas But... how you can quickly and easily gain an overview of an Excel model, with just a few clicks The automatically generated overview has many great uses, as illustrated in the book This book is meant