Is this spreadsheet ready to become an application?
Drop an Excel workbook in. It is opened in your browser, never uploaded, and profiled: how much logic it holds, whether there are macros, what it is linked to, which parts are forms, rules and reports. From that you get a plain outline of what replacing it with an application would involve and what to check first.
Result
Sheets
| Sheet | Size | Formulas | Validations | Notes |
|---|
What a replacement would involve
Check first
Functions used
What it reads
- Structure
- Sheets, their size, which are hidden or protected, structured tables, named ranges, merged cells and comments.
- Logic
- Every formula: how many, which functions they use, which reach across sheets or into other files, and the volatile ones that change with time or position.
- Inputs and outputs
- Data validation rules, conditional formatting, pivot tables and charts: the parts that become forms, rules and reports.
- Outside connections
- Links to other workbooks, data connections (ODBC, web queries, Power Query) and whether a VBA project is embedded.
What it does not read
- Cell values
- The contents of cells are not read, counted or shown. The check is about the workbook's shape, not its data.
- VBA code
- A macro project is detected and sized, not read. What the macros do is the first thing to find out by hand.
- Old .xls files
- The binary format is not supported. Save as .xlsx (or .xlsm) in Excel first.
- Anything outside the file
- Nothing is uploaded and nothing else is fetched. The workbook is opened in your browser and closed when you leave the page.
How the verdict is reached
The workbook is placed in one of four bands from what it contains. A list has data and little logic. A calculator adds a body of formulas. An application in a spreadsheet has rules, inputs, protection and reports: it is doing a system's job. A system held together by a spreadsheet adds macros or links to other files and feeds. Macros and outside connections weigh most, because they are where the hidden work is.
The outline is a starting point for a conversation, not an estimate. Two workbooks with the same profile can be very different jobs, depending on what the formulas mean and who relies on them. Our pages on replacing spreadsheets and on Excel and VBA describe how we go about it.
Running the business on a workbook one person understands?
Send us the outline. We will say whether it is a candidate for a fixed-price replacement and what we would look at first.