A seven-column spreadsheet will work for a simple checkbook register. Open Excel, click the Save button and save the register to a convenient location in your system. In the first row of the spreadsheet, starting in column A, add these labels in all capital letters: code, date, payee, description, payment, deposit and balance.
Lesson 7: Double-Check Your Formulas /en/excelformulas/solving-reallife-problems-in-excel/content/ Double-check your formulas One of the most powerful features of Excel is the ability to create formulas. You can use formulas to calculate new values, analyze data, and much more. But formulas also have a downside: If you make even a small mistake when typing a formula, it can give an incorrect result. To make matters worse, your spreadsheet will not always tell you if a formula is wrong.
It will usually just go ahead and run the calculations and give you the wrong answer. It's up to you to double-check your formulas whenever you create them. We've put together a list of tips you can use to help check formulas for accuracy.
These tips won't help you solve every problem you encounter, but they should provide you with the tools to identify many common errors. Check the references Most formulas use at least one cell reference. When you double-click a formula, it will highlight all of the referenced cells. You can then double-check each one to make sure they are correct.
Ballpark it You can use your own experience, critical-thinking skills, and common sense to estimate what the answer should be. If Excel gives you a much larger or smaller value than expected, there may be a problem with your formula (or with the values in the cells). For example, if you are calculating the total price of 8 items that are 98 cents each, the answer should be slightly less than $8. In the example below, the formula calculated the answer as $784.00, which is incorrect. That's because the price in A2 was entered as 98, and it should have been 0.98. As you can see, even the smallest details can make a huge difference.
Note that this tip does not always work. In some cases, the wrong answer may be fairly close to the correct answer. However, in many situations it can help you quickly catch a problem in your formula. Check the arguments If you're using a function, make sure each required argument is included. A small dialog box should appear as you're typing the function to let you know what arguments are needed. This can be especially useful when you're trying to fix a function that's not working correctly.
For example, let's look at the function below.