Background
Spreadsheets are useful, but they often become unofficial business systems — without owners, without testing, without backup.
Questions to ask yourself
- Which spreadsheets are business-critical, and who owns them?
- Are there multiple conflicting versions in circulation?
- Are formulas protected from accidental edits?
- Do any contain sensitive data on someone's laptop?
- Should some have become proper systems years ago?
What you can do today
Triage your spreadsheet estate
Three free actions.
- 01Open Documents/Desktop. Sort by “Date modified.” Anything called Master, Live, FINAL_v3_real that's been touched today is probably running something.
- 02For each, ask: “If this file vanished now, how long would it take to rebuild?”
- 03Use Review → Protect Sheet on at least the formula cells. Costs nothing.