This spreadsheet is part of the Administrative Data and Quality course

It relates to module 3: best practice spreadsheets and data visualisation

You will be able to go through the examples shown on the slides yourself, to see the points being demonstrated

Contents description
Information this sheet, referred to in slide 'workbook design (2)'
bad practice totals exercise 1 in slide 'use of formulae (2)'; exercise 2 in 'use of formulae (3)'
good practice totals as above, demonstrating the preferred way of doing both
autofill referred to in slide 'quality assurance (3)'
cell formats referred to in slide 'quality assurance (4)'
sorting tables referred to in slide 'quality assurance (7)'

Created 24 September 2024

oints being demonstrated
 bad practice totals
Budget Projection
Inflation multiplier 1.1 1.15

INCOME Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total

Grants 40500 44550 46575 131625

Donations 36600 40260 42090 118950
Sales 11600 12760 13340 37700
Other 5000 5500 5750 16250
Total 93700 103070 107755 304525

Exercise 1:
Inflation has changed. You need to increase your inflation multiplier to 1.2 in year 2, 1.3 in year 3
How do you do this?

Exercise 2:
1. insert a new row below ‘Other’ (either highlight row 10 and ‘insert above’ or highlight row 9 and ‘insert below’)
2. insert ‘Extras’ into new cell A10
3. insert the value 4,000 into new cell B10
4. What has happened to your total in cell B11?

Page 1
 bad practice totals

ow 9 and ‘insert below’)

Page 2
 good practice totals
Budget Projection
Inflation multiplier 1.1 1.15

INCOME Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total

Grants 40500 44550 46575 131625

Donations 36600 40260 42090 118950
Sales 11600 12760 13340 37700
Other 5000 5500 5750 16250

Total 93700 103070 107755 304525

Exercise 1:
Inflation has changed. You need to increase your inflation multiplier to 1.2 in year 2, 1.3 in year 3
How do you do this?

Exercise 2:
1. insert a new row below ‘Other’ (either highlight row 10 or 11 and ‘insert above’ or highlight row 9 or 10 and ‘insert below
2. insert ‘Extras’ into new cell A11
3. insert the value 4,000 into new cell B11
4. What has happened to your total in cell B12?

NOTE exercise 1: as well as referring to a cell that you can change (rather than hard-coding into the table like the bad exa
NOTE exercise 2: if you then delete the row you inserted, the spreadsheet resets the sum formula to B6:B9, so beware of

Page 3
 good practice totals

hlight row 9 or 10 and ‘insert below’)

ding into the table like the bad example), it is often preferable to ‘anchor’ with $ signs
m formula to B6:B9, so beware of this!

Page 4
 autofill
Company Year Value 1 Value 2
CompanyA 2018 0.5719954 0.247778866
CompanyA 2019 0.665544068 0.525824347
CompanyA 0.840838319 0.124220929
CompanyB 0.550651087 0.622679704
CompanyB 0.528820239 0.213947371
CompanyB 0.323771709 0.330139518
CompanyC 0.664679348 0.542123132
CompanyC 0.21097607 0.447369928
CompanyC 0.043514633 0.02577885

Exercise 1:
highlight cells B2 and B3
pull the cells down to B10 to autofill (or click the square at the bottom of the selected cells)
… this is not what you want for this data set – look at what your rows represent (3 different companies, each with year 201

Person start date

A 01/03/24
B
C
D
E

Exercise 2:
Persons A-E all started on the same date
pull the value for cell B20 down to cell B24
what has happened to your dates?

Page 5
 autofill

ent companies, each with year 2018, 2019, 2020)

Page 6
 cell formats

Spreadsheets try to be helpful…

The examples in the slide 'quality assurance (4)'

MARCH1 is short for Membrane-associated ring finger gene
Type the characters MARCH1 into the cell below

… unfortunately the spreadsheet thinks you are entering a date, and changes it for you

Another example is if you have any coding system that includes numbers and the letter E
Try typing any combination of numbers with the letter E in the middle:

… spreadsheets only recognise that as a number

Other examples
It is common practice to enter data on age ranges

Exercise 1: enter the categories 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19 in cells B7 to B10 below

what has happened to your categories?

suggested solutions:
1. right click your cell and specify the cell format ‘text’, or
2. insert a single quote mark (‘) in front of your text. This forces the spreadsheet to treat anyth

also beware that spreadsheets keep the cell format when you copy and paste that cell elsewhere

and note that spreadsheets won’t sort those categories in the way you logically want them sorted
exercise: select the cells B36-B41, sort them (either right click, sort ascending, or Data→sort→)

Age
0-4
5-9
10-14
15-19
20-24
25-29

Spreadsheets don’t realise these are age groups, and that ages 5-9 should come before ages 10-14
Instead they just recognise that the number 1 comes before the number 5

Page 7
 cell formats

nges it for you

and the letter E

ces the spreadsheet to treat anything after the ' as text

aste that cell elsewhere

ically want them sorted

ding, or Data→sort→)

d come before ages 10-14

Page 8
 sorting tables

Name Height (cm) Name Height (inches)

Jane 188 Jane 74.02
Joshua 173 Joshua 68.11
Ernest 157 Ernest 61.81
Samuel 170 Samuel 66.93

These tables have been separated by a blank column

Exercise 1:
select cell F2
sort the column by decreasing order (Data > sort descending)
What has happened to your data?

Name Height (cm) Name Height (inches)

Jane 188 Jane 74.02
Joshua 173 Joshua 68.11
Ernest 157 Ernest 61.81
Samuel 170 Samuel 66.93

These tables have had the blank column removed

Exercise 2:
select cell E15
sort the column by decreasing order (Data > sort descending)
what has happened to your data now?

Name Height (cm) Name Height (inches)

Jane 188 Jane 74.02
Joshua 173 Joshua 68.11
Ernest 157 Ernest 61.81
Samuel 170 Samuel 66.93

These tables still have the empty column

Exercise 3:
select cells B30 to F34
sort the column by decreasing order (Data > Sort > choose to sort descending by Height (inches))
what has happened to your data now?

Page 9
 sorting tables

ding by Height (inches))

Page 10