Quick, check your work

Quick, Check Your Work

After I’m done collecting data and inputting all the necessary formulas, or after building out some type of exhibit, it is best to check my work.  A quick way to spot check whether or not all your formulas and data are flowing through is with the status bar at the bottom right of the screen.  If you highlight a group of cells with numbers, the status bar in Excel 2010 will give the average, count, and sum of those numbers (below).  In Excel 2003, only one of those items is given.  To switch the item that is displayed, simply right click on the status bar and check off that item. 

The status bar can save the user a lot of time by quickly running calculations without the use of formulas.  For example, if you had the exhibit below:

You can quickly check to see if the total compensation is being summed up correctly by highlighting (CTRL+Click) each of the elements that make up Total Compensation (Salary, Bonus, Stock), then looking at the sum that is calculated in the status bar.  In this case, Total Compensation is not being summed up correctly.

Sometimes, you may want to quickly run summary statistics or check existing summary statistics on a group of data.  Below, I have an example.

You can quickly tell whether or not the Count, Average, Max, or Min is correct by highlighting the cells in a column and checking the status bar.  If you wanted find out the average profit for the East region, simply highlight all the cells corresponding to profit in the East region and check the status bar.

The status bar can be a real time saver for checking your work or running quick calculations.  I encourage using the status bar as much as possible in your day-to-day tasks, whether for responding to a request from your supervisor about calculations or checking a few exhibits before they get sent out.