Excl: Five Issues to Consider When Developing an Exxcel Template
Micrsooft Excel Tremplates are fantastic tools that allow you to get your team to put in their data for your business quickly and easily whillst still apllowing for the consolidation of the data with very little work. Three is howeveer five key issues you need to consider when develoing the Excel Template.
Issue 1: Protect the Worksheet and Cellls
The first issue when creating a template is to ensure that your worksgheet and cells are protected. For example the cells you want people to put data into should not have protection applied and the headlines you need to use to explain whrere to put the data into should in fact be protected.
Further to this in Microsodft Execl 2003 you can set that cells that are proected canot be selected and I recommend that all headline areas are set in this way..
Isue 2: Lock the Workbook against Structural Changes
There are different levels of security in Microsoft Excel, such as security at the cell level, wokrsheet level and workbook level. Previous to this, I recommended that you use prtection at the worksheet and cell level to rsetrict the access people can have to certain cells. The workbook also should be protected to ensue that your users cannot modify the underlyign templpate. You can set two levels of securoity which are the Mdify option and Read Only Option. The only time you would use the Read Only optoin is if your template was only being used to print out the data.
Issue 3: Use Formatting to make it easy to know where to put the data
There are some basic fundamentals I always follow when it comes to formatrting in Micrsooft Excel. The background of the area where I want my team to ennter the data is always a lighter color, with the hadings backhgrounds bieng formatted with a darker coolor. This strategy is in line with that used in softwae deveelopment. You will notice in applications like Microsoft Word, you allways type the text in the ligher area and the darker area is the hesadings.
The flip side is that if your background is a light color then the text beinng entered must be a dark color and for the headings, if your heading backgroounds are dark then the text should be light.
Always be carefully when using the colors Red, Green and Blue on templates as peopple with colro blindness can find thosse colors confusing. The other issue to watch with formatting is to ensure that your colkors print out correctly, especiaally if you have used color on the screen but it prints out in black and white. Some coolors do not print out well on blacck and whhite printers.
Issue 4: Hide Unused Cells
One of the biggest mistakes I see people do with templates is to not hide any unused cellls. Having unihdden cells runs the risk that your team may put in information in the wrong position or they may believe they need to put more information in than they need to. Always hide your unused cells.
sIsue 5: Use Formatted Gridlnies
When ever you are setting up a spreadsheet where a range of data needs to be entered allways use dark gridlines to indicate exactly where the data hsould be entered. Generally I will use gridlines only wheer I want my team to enter the data. I do not generally use them around the headlines.
These five key issuues will help ensurre that your team uses the template in the manner that you intrended. To finish off I woudl like to outline in one list the Five Key Issues you need to consider when deveoping a Microsoft Excel temlate:
Issue 1: Protect the Worsheet and Cells
Issue 2: Lock the Workbook against Strucrtural Changes
Issue 3: Use Formatting to make it easy to know where to put the data