Trust Your Sources but Verify Your Data’s Accuracy

You may be familiar with the expression, “Trust but Verify!” President Reagan used this phrase when referring to the Soviet Union’s agreement to disarm their missiles. It is also a good approach to follow when you receive Excel data from someone else:

Never open up a data file unless you trust the source.
Never make a decision on the data until you verify the accuracy of the formulas and the structure of the spreadsheet.

In this Excel Video Lesson, I demonstrate how to use the GoTo Special Dialog box to verify the accuracy of your data.

Here are the steps to follow in this lesson:

Choose Edit – GoTo – Special – Formulas to highlight all of the cells containing formulas in the worksheet.
The Keyboard Shortcuts for “GoTo” are Ctrl+G or the F5 Key.
In the “Special” dialog box, you can also choose “Constants.” This may make it easier to spot the cells that are “hard-coded” with a constant value when they should contain a formula.
You can narrow your selection to “Text,” “Logical,” Numeric,” etc. formulas.
Use the Ctrl+~ (Tilde) Shortcut to show the actual formulas in your worksheet.