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Show HN: An Excel addin to automatically use cell names in formulas

4 pointsby evandwightover 2 years ago
Automatically convert Excel files formatted like the following:<p><pre><code> &#x2F;* Tax rate *&#x2F; var b1 = 50%; &#x2F;* Salary *&#x2F; var b2 = 120000; var b3 = b1 * b2; </code></pre> To:<p><pre><code> var tax_rate = 50%; var salary = 120000; var b3 = tax_rate * salary; </code></pre> I&#x27;m trying to improve the readability and feature discovery of excel by bringing linting and autoformatting to excel.<p>Currently there&#x27;s only the one linting rule. What excel best practices would you like to see added?

1 comment

evandwightover 2 years ago
This was inspired by a hn comment that linked to &quot;you suck at excel&quot; [0].<p>First, I realized how much I suck at excel despite being in love with it. Excel just has so many features and the basics are good enough to solve most excel problems. This means I never search for a better method and only discover features through word of mouth.<p>Then, I realized many of the suggestions could be automatically applied (named cells, standardized color formatting, defined tables). Other suggestions could just be recommended (you seem to be using formulas to build a pivot table, click here to learn about pivot tables).<p>This seems to obvious so it probably exists. But I only found Microsoft&#x27;s excellent excel static analysis addin ExcelLint.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c</a>