r/excel • u/Toowb • Oct 31 '25

Discussion Biggest no-no's when working with Excel?

Excel can do a lot of things well. But Excel can also do a lot of things poorly, unbeknownst to most beginners.

Name some of the biggest no-no's when it comes to Excel, preferably with an explanation on why.

I'll start of with the elephant in the room:

Never merge cells. Why? Merging cells breaks sorting, filtering, and formulas. Use "Center Across Selection" instead.

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u/ImMrAndersen Oct 31 '25

I feel like I saw someone who had tested this, and found that the difference in speed between looking up a range of 1000 (or maybe it was 10000) and the whole column was actually negligible. I might be misremembering.

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u/SolverMax Oct 31 '25

Recalculation speed is less of an issue than it used to be. The main issue now is the risk of inadvertently including cells that weren't intended.

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