Use the INDIRECT route

May 18, 2009

The Excel INDIRECT function is one many people don’t know about. And for those who do, many/most will tell you not to use it. But I beg to differ. Used correctly and sparingly, this can be a great way to make your models more understandable, and also prevent errors creeping into your models in the future. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Darren Miller

Styles are more fashionable

May 11, 2009

One of the most powerful and most easily understood (but least used) features in Excel is Styles.

Styles allow you to define a cell format (things like number format, shading, borders, etc), give this format a meaningful name (such “input”) and then apply this format to cells in your workbook.  ”Ok ” — you say — ”But I can just as easily format cells individually on the fly, and I can even copy a cell’s format and paste this to other cells”. Yes, you can, but here’s why doing it like this is problematic: Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Darren Miller

Welcome to Sumwise’s Blog

May 6, 2009

Welcome to Sumwise’s blog! We look forward to sharing our thoughts with you on the fascinating world of financial modeling. What! Financial modeling? Fascinating? Well, it is to us – and possibly to many of you (well, hopefully at least a few of you).

Anyway, we all know that spreadsheets are the dominant tool for building a financial model, and we all know that Microsoft dominates this space with Excel. So, I guess this is as much about Excel per se as it is about financial modeling.

We hope to bring you tales of uses and abuses, traps and tricks, and generate some good debate around Excel and it’s use for financial modeling. Who knows, we might even find a cause (and cure) for the whole GFC! Looking forward to starting a conversation with you.

Comments Off | Financial Modelling | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Darren Miller