I'm Brendan Hyland. I help regulated facilities transform their software, spreadsheets, workflows and documents from time-consuming, deviation-invoking, regulatory burdens, to the competitive advantage they were meant to be. Join me every week as we take a few minutes to explore, design, test and improve the critical systems we use in our facilities.
Excel Hazard #13: The Wayward Cell Block
|
Hazard Name: The Wayward Cell Block Description: An unintentional change in a block of formulas caused by accidental cut-n-paste, drag-n-drop, fill handle functions, or flash fill. Often results in a similar looking formula, but with the cell references being offset by one or more rows or columns. Detection: When resulting in an inconsistent formula in a row or block, these are usually flagged by a warning. They may also cause a #REF! error if at the ends of a row or column. Warning: Under certain conditions a block of errant cell formulas can be hidden and difficult to track down. Look for clues like repeating numbers, sudden changes in magnitude, or inconsistent formatting. If suspected, use tools such as Show Formulas (Ctrl+`) and Trace precedents/dependents (Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] to navigate). Mitigation: Lock formula cells and protect worksheets. Until next time, thanks for reading! – Brendan p.s. Enjoy this message? Read more at the Hyland Quality Systems website. |
The Daily HaiQu
I'm Brendan Hyland. I help regulated facilities transform their software, spreadsheets, workflows and documents from time-consuming, deviation-invoking, regulatory burdens, to the competitive advantage they were meant to be. Join me every week as we take a few minutes to explore, design, test and improve the critical systems we use in our facilities.
It’s the first step of the problem solving framework that I was taught back in Engineering school. Not ‘Plan’. Not “Define”. “I want to and I can”. That particular framework - the McMaster Six Step - never gained the popularity of the ones now used today, but in the end they all contain the same basic elements - research, planning & design, implementation, evaluation and iteration - just stated in different ways. However I’ve never really seen this particular element called out explicitly...
My eight year old son figured out a hack to make the music service work better for him. The kids have a Google smart speaker that is attached to a Spotify account so they can just ask for any of their favourite music. Anyone who has pre-teens in the house probably knows how much such a setup is used - all day every day. Coming from someone who had to run to the double-cassette boom box to press the record button any time a new favourite song came on the radio just so I could listen to it...
I’ve seen several quality leaders complain this week about their disappointment with generative AI - they’re not getting the results they expected. And I understand why - context is king! If you just ask AI to write a procedure or generate a quality document, you’ll get generic, mediocre output. Without enough context, AI can only produce something generic based on its training data. But how do you give it that context? By the time you’ve gone back and forth trying to “engineer the prompt” to...