Working With Data In Excel Lists

It is important to understand what are the lists of data in Excel and how to create them. Too often, the structure and field names used in the data lists are not descriptive. This can cause problems when analyzing the data with the tools of Excel (Pivot Tables, Solver ...).

When creating a list of data to take into account:

• All records in the list share the same data field names. For example, field names used to store a single data. For example, use multiple fields (name, First name and Second name) instead of a single field (full name).

• All values ​​in each field must be consistent. For example, if the Total Sales field data with two decimal places, another record should not have four decimal places. • No value of the fields must be empty, even if the value is unknown. In this case, you would enter the value 0. Leaving a blank data value can sometimes be difficult to make the calculations or the results we obtain are incorrect. • It is better to create only one list in each spreadsheet. Tasks such as sorting, grouping and filtering work best when limited to single lists in a single worksheet. • The field names should be descriptive but not too much. For example, a field called name is more descriptive than a field called the Field A. also a field called Total sales could be as easy to understand as a field called Sales totals in the bottom of an invoice.

These tips will help prevent errors in our calculations and we offer the possibility of using other tools of Excel more efficiently.