Comments on: Calculating Running Totals without Errors

By: darmawan

darmawan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:45:00 +0000

thank, bright idea. off-set function is best way out from the problem.

By: Nawazish

Nawazish — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:57:00 +0000

Thanx a lot, i was facing same problem and now solve with help of your kind guidance.
The offset function really works.

By: Randy Harmelink

Randy Harmelink — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:24:00 +0000

I use the offset() function like this between rows, to prevent errors when deleting rows. However, I don’t think I’d ever use the offset() function like this for picking up data on the same row. If you were to insert an additional column, say for an account number or additional description, or move the income or expense columns, all of your running subtotals would be hosed. I just don’t see any gain to using offset() to pick up something on the same row.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 18:41:00 +0000

Eek -

First of all, putting SUM() around an otherwise healthy formula is redundant and unnecessary. And redundant.

Second, what if you delete the 4th row, or manually rearrange rows? Your formula loses its reference, which was Curt's whole point.

By: EEK-A-CELL

EEK-A-CELL — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:34:00 +0000

Has anybody tried this on PocketExcel???
I've tried a bunch of methods the one that works like this is =SUM(E4+B5-C5)
Thanks!

By: Tushar Mehta

Tushar Mehta — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 20:07:00 +0000

Curt wrote, "I agree, Tushar, that you shouldn't delete rows if your list could be audited."

Curt, my intent wasn't to comment on the specifics of your solution but rather on the more general issue of the trustworthiness of Excel based solutions. Nor is it meant to knock Excel. It is the "free form" nature of spreadsheets (coupled with the power of programming languages like VBA) that gives them tremendous power and usability. But, that comes at a price, a piece of which is the lack of an audit trail. Another component is understandability and trust in the result. If you are the senior executive who has to sign off on something and risk criminal or civil prosecution if it turns out you "lied," I imagine it would add an element of uneasiness in some.

[Recently, I was asked to help with a workbook that "well, it works almost all the time but sometimes the numbers don't seem quite right and we cannot figure out what's going on." It took me several days to just understand what was what and I still wouldn't bet any money on that! References to cells here and there, in this worksheet and that, up and down, back and forth, left and right, named formulas, named ranges, names that mapped to error values, very hidden names, gooblydegook array formulas designed to "save" a cell or two, and a godforsaken amount of VBA with almost all global variables. With a "solution" like this, it isn't SOX I would worry about -- and, forget about mission critical stuff. *Any* business decision that relied on this workbook would be, IMO, a crap shoot.]

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:28:00 +0000

Re my QuickBooks offer, I have a winner. The disk and a couple books are on their way in this morning’s mail.

By: fzz

fzz — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 01:22:00 +0000

The UPONE defined name is clever, but it needs to be defined as =!A1 if it's going to be used in multiple worksheets. If defined as =A1, Excel adds the worksheet name to the definition.

For more general cases in which defined names would be awkward, there are alternatives to OFFSET, which is a volatile function, so a drag on recalc speed if used extensively in large workbooks. INDEX calls can usually be used instead, even if they have to use $1:$65536 as first argument and call ROW() and COLUMN() in the other arguments.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:34:00 +0000

Quickbooks!! I used it for half a year on the suggestion of my accountant. It was a waste of money and time, I could never figure out how to get the views I could do in five minutes in Excel, and I discovered I was carrying two sets of books, Quickbooks and my trusty old Excel. Finally I asked the accountant, and it turns out he recommended it because he thought it would make my life easier, he only needed numbers in a table, and he preferred Excel worksheets. Duh, Ron, I'm an Excel programmer. Quickbooks came off the PC.

If anyone wants Quickbooks 2006 for the cost of shipping, it's yours. Email me at jp at peltiertech dot com.

By: cfrye

cfrye — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 09:27:00 +0000

I haven't even considered using the SDK. I have a very simple business, and I don't want to add any complexity where none is required.

Curt