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Spent 4 hours debugging a spreadsheet formula that was just a missing comma
I was working on a budget tracker for my side gig last Tuesday and kept getting this error that made no sense. Tried every fix I could think of for like 3 hours, googling wild stuff. Turned out I forgot one comma in a SUMIFS formula that linked three different sheets. Total time wasted was around 4 hours, all because I typed a period instead of a comma. Has anyone else had a super simple mistake eat up an entire afternoon like that?
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the_phoenix23d ago
Did you ever figure out if there's a way to CATCH that kind of dumb mistake faster, like a simple validation rule or conditional formatting trick? I've been in that exact spot missing a stupid comma and it's maddening. Wondering if you changed anything about how you build formulas now to avoid it happening again.
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tyler49222d ago
Man wait you didn't already have that set up? I figured everyone had some kind of conditional formatting flagging their formulas after the first time they missed a comma and spent an hour hunting for it. I set mine up years ago after a really bad day where I was about to throw my laptop out the window. It's just a simple rule that highlights any cell where the formula has a weird character count or looks incomplete. Helps catch the dumb stuff before I even hit enter.
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