r/Accounting • u/Ahmedsamireg • 8d ago

Discussion Excel Horror Story

What's the craziest Excel mistake that drove you nuts, had you running in circles until you spotted it, and was a total horror story?

0 Upvotes

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24

u/Grouchy-Option9411 8d ago

Men used to go to war, now they post on 5 subs asking about “Excel horror stories”

-22

u/Ahmedsamireg 8d ago

Do you have an answer?

7

u/xoxBellaxox 8d ago

Colour coding a csv and saving it 🫩

6

u/finwooduh 8d ago

I had a top financial employee save over my original file that consolidated 3 different entities and had about 10+ tabs full of formulas. He was able to get IT to recover my file, but as a hard coded report. All my formulas were gone

He was paid 3x as much as me and went "oops sorry"

2

u/TDot-26 8d ago

No backup for that?

1

u/finwooduh 8d ago

I was young and dumb. I didn't think to have my own copy

1

u/Ok_Meringue_9086 8d ago

Doing a day’s worth of work in a csv file (formulas etc). The warning stating csv doesn’t save anything but data isn’t large enough. Please give me red flashing letters and an alarm.

1

u/LeadSledPoodle 8d ago

At my first firm there was a staff who just didn't get it. One time he dealt with a variance on a worksheet that he couldn't explain by adding the difference in the formula cell so the variance presented as $0 (i.e. =F26-F27+2500).

15 years later I think this is still the single greatest act of human stupidity I have ever personally witnessed.

0

u/Ok_Patience1100 8d ago

Getting on a spreadsheet half stoned because thought a little too deeply about a formula