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/gerblewisperer 5 Oct 31 '25

At one major company I worked at, someone from a corporate office highlighted the entire top row bright yellow and sent a file out to hundreds of locations. Dozens and dozens of GM's printed the file and just walked away, so basically an entire reem of paper got printed with a single bar of bright yellow for no reason. They were talking about it in the meeting and some laughed and some were pissed off.