Chat with a Spreadsheet
Six tabs, a colour convention nobody wrote down, and one number on the summary sheet that everything else is supposed to roll up to. You did not build this file and you have one question about it.
Try asking
Checking a model you did not build
A spreadsheet is not a table, it is a small program, and the honest question about someone else's is whether it still runs. Ask for the formulas to be checked and the workbook gets recalculated from the top, every formula on every sheet, then swept for the seven errors this check looks for, the ones a spreadsheet leaves in a cell when something has come apart: #REF!, #DIV/0!, #VALUE!, #NAME?, #NULL!, #NUM! and #N/A. What comes back is a count of each and the addresses in Sheet!Cell form, so you go to Assumptions!D14 rather than hunting for it.
Two things about that report are worth knowing before you rely on it. It lists the first twenty locations for each type of error, so a workbook with four hundred broken references tells you there are four hundred and shows you twenty. That is normally enough, because broken references arrive in columns, so twenty addresses point straight at the handful of formulas that caused all of them. And the check has no memory: a #REF! that has been sitting in the file since before it reached you appears next to one introduced this morning, with nothing to distinguish them.
You also get the count of formulas in the file, which is the fastest read on what you have been handed. A budget with eleven formulas is a table someone typed. A budget with nine hundred is a model, and it deserves the recalculation before you quote anything out of it.
Getting oriented in six tabs
The workbook goes up whole. Every sheet in it is readable, not only the one that happened to be on screen when it was saved, so a good second question is not about a number at all. "What is on each tab, and which ones feed the summary?" comes back with the tab names, what each one holds, and how far down the rows go, which is the orientation you would otherwise buy by clicking through six tabs and scrolling each of them to the bottom.
After that you can ask across them. "Where does the revenue figure on Summary come from?" "Which tab has headcount by month?" The one case worth being explicit about is two tabs with names that look alike, Q3 and Q3 final and Q3 final v2. Say which one you mean and it stops being a coin flip.
It does have to be a file. There is no connection to a Sheets account or a Drive folder, so a Google Sheet needs downloading first, as XLSX or CSV, and then it behaves like any other workbook.
What makes a spreadsheet read wrong
Four habits cause most of the trouble, and all four are ordinary spreadsheet manners rather than mistakes.
A merged cell across the top. Merging A1 through D1 to hold a title leaves one cell with the words in it and three with nothing, so the row you think of as the header is the row below. Say which row the column names are on and the ambiguity is gone.
Numbers that are secretly text. A column that arrived from an export as 1,240 with the comma baked in is a piece of text, and a sum across it is not a sum. If a total looks suspiciously round or suspiciously small, ask what type that column is.
A total row at the bottom. Read as data, it double-counts the entire column. Same for blank spacer rows used for looks.
Two tables sharing one sheet, stacked or side by side. Name the range or say which of the two you mean.
What comes back
Usually the answer itself, typed into the thread with the number in it and the sheet it came from. When you want the working rather than the result, ask for the file: a new workbook comes back with live formulas in the cells rather than values pasted in, so changing an input still moves everything downstream, which is the only reason to keep it in a spreadsheet at all. That rule is deliberate, and it is worth knowing it applies to anything rebuilt for you. A total arrives as a formula over the range it summed, not as a number typed into a cell where a formula should be.
A chart is the one request that leaves the spreadsheet behind. Bar, line and pie all get made, but they get drawn and rendered as a graphic rather than dropped into the workbook as a chart object anchored to your data, so the file you download is still a spreadsheet and the chart is a separate thing you place. Worth knowing before you ask, because it is the right answer for a deck and the wrong one if you wanted something that redraws when the numbers change.
How it works
The workbook goes up with all of its sheets
Ask about a tab, a number, or the formulas behind it
Take the answer in the thread, or a rebuilt file back