This post explains how you can make your own functions in Excel without VBA. Suppose you have a spreadsheet like this: Ugh! That is an ugly formula! Wouldn’t it be nicer if we could write something like =getCity(A2)? Of course, we could make a user-defined function (UDF) with VBA. VBA is powerful enough to create functions, […]
Expector 1.0.0.7 released
We just released a new version of Expector, with a number of bug fixes (thanks for all the reports!) but also a few new features: Test quality Clicking this button helps you determine how well your spreadsheet is tested. Expector calculates what percentage of non-empty cells in your spreadsheet that are covered (refered to) by at least […]
Why feminists are so annoying
I love programming and problem solving and nerd culture and growing up I never felt that computer science was not the place for me. I understand now how incredibly lucky I was, but that is for another blog post. When I grew older, my gender grew into a topic. I remember that when I started grad […]
VLOOKUP considered harmful
If you have worked with spreadsheets a bit, you must have encountered lookup functions. The most common one is the VLOOKUP, which can be used to couple two tables: What not everyone knows it that you can use LOOKUPs in another way as well, to classify data. That looks as follows: By default, Excel (and […]
A modern day Pompeii: Spreadsheets at Enron
Update (1-15-2014): This paper is accepted at ICSE 2015 in the industrial track. Real spreadsheets needed From the day I got the idea of researching spreadsheets for my PhD dissertation, I needed access to ‘real life’ spreadsheets, those as really used within companies. I approached a number of companies and naively thought they would share a few […]
