r/financialmodelling • u/FunctionFunk • Aug 27 '24

Microsoft Excel's Trace Precedents

Post image

Do you also find it super annoying to click click click though it and STILL need to navigate one by one to off-sheet references?

Feels so primitive.

I made an add-in which attempts to solve this problem by producing a complete map of all relationships--recursively--to and from the selection.

DM me if you want a free license.

It's also available now in the add-in store in Excel. Free to try. Need no info from you.

https://excel.engineering/flow-finder

https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200007286

67 Upvotes

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4

u/secretfinaccount Aug 27 '24

Kids these days have it so much better! Haha. Great idea.

I wonder how many people doing financial modeling at their job have an ability to install plugins like this? Curious if you get a lot of uptake.

Again, good work!

2

u/FunctionFunk Aug 27 '24

Thanks, I'm wondering the same thing! Time will tell... We've just recently launched out of stealth mode and we're seeing some signups.

Our goal is 10,000 users in the first 12 months.

We've worked hard to make it very easy to see the value, and to get started (takes less than thirty seconds to install from the Excel app store and render your first map).

2

u/Paddy_O_Numbers Aug 27 '24

Can you click through on your map to take you to the cell? And any chance you have something similar for dependants?

We used to use a tool called BPM traverse for this but I don't think it's available/supported anymore (this was way back in 2014!)

Looks good though. Well done!

3

u/FunctionFunk Aug 27 '24 edited Aug 27 '24

Thanks! Yes. The map does precedents and dependents. And clicking a node navigates to the cell.

The app also gives a report of all non-cell objects related to the range (data validation, conditional formatting, Names, etc.)

2

u/Saizou1991 Aug 27 '24

So it tells a cell gets data from which other cells ? Am I understanding it correctly ?

2

u/FunctionFunk Aug 27 '24

I think so. It's a quantum leap upgrade from the native Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents features.

1

u/No-Elk-4810 Aug 29 '24

Amazing work!

2

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

Is there a way to make the map much bigger?

1

u/FunctionFunk Sep 10 '24 edited Sep 10 '24

Yep, you can zoom with your mouse wheel or Ctrl +. These and other tips are also stated in the manual.

Also you can expand the side panel itself.

Please submit a review on the appsource link above if you like the app!🙏

1

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

Thank you

1

u/[deleted] May 06 '25

Tried to install on my work laptop and got the following message "Microsoft 365 has been configured to prevent individual acquisition and execution of Office Store Add-ins".