MESSIEST SPREADSHEET MISTAKE
Discover the most common mistake made in spreadsheets that leads to messy data and learn how to fix it using data validation techniques. This video will guide you through the process of implementing effective data validation to keep your spreadsheets organized and accurate.
Here's the messiest mistake you're making in spreadsheets, and it's happening even before you do anything in your sheet, and it happens to every single sheet you're doing. So what's going on is you start a sheet and you put in data and it gets messy, or you put in data , other people put in data , data gets in there. I'm gonna explain to you why it's messy from the get-go and what you're missing. So what's going on is there is no fix to this mistake. That is font, that is size, row size, column size, nothing. The mistake you're making is not using data validation . Now, let me explain a little bit about this.
So we can be using spreadsheets for CRMs, we can be using them for just a little bit of data entry, we can be using them to do project management, whatever it is. Often, we're going to have one of two things: dates or numbers, and we're going to have, like, some qualitative data , some l- data where we need to select it from a list. There's only a few items of text that could potentially be here.
Like in this case, we have a name of, like, an employee, something employee here. We have an interaction, what they did with a client, and these two columns are going to get super messy because we're gonna do some things like, oh, on this day, 20/06, uh, we talked to Sam Jones. And on this day, uh, the 4th of, uh, 12/2026, 2026, we talked to Mr. Jones or Mrs. Jones. Are these all the same person? Maybe they should be. But if we just type in anything, we're gonna get anything.
If you allow people to type in anything, they will type in anything. But I'm gonna fix this mistake right now with some data validation , and it's going to feel absolutely magical. Right, I'm gonna go into the C column here, and I can go to data , data validation . It's right there.
I can also right-click, and I can scroll down to data validation . Sometimes this, this UI, it's, it, it might be in some other places, like view more column actions. Could be… That's where it used to be. Right now, it's in data validation .
And if I start typing and I go, "Oh, Kermit the Front," no, that, that's not right. Or I say Kermit Frog or Frog, Frong Kermit, these are all the same, and, and again, if you let anyone type in anything, they will type in anything. And it'll be not malicious. It will not be malicious at all. They're just trying to get their work done, and they don't realize that we need to see how many interactions that we have with a client.
Kermit the Frog. Let me get that right at some, some point. Click Done. And if I want it to be over the course of the entire column , I do have to change this D2 to colon D, D2 colon D. Click Done.
Isn't that awesome? It's also a little fuzzy search, so I can just type in frog, and there is the option, Kermit the Frog. If you don't like this pill, which I personally, as an old man of spreadsheets, I don't like it one bit, but I do understand that some people love it.
So that's why I prefer, in 95% of dropdowns, having arrow. However, I totally understand, and I am empathetic to your needs if you want the chip or you want plain text to absolutely wow them.
However, let me say one thing, is that data validation means that we will validate the data type.
Ask me questions down in the comments and I will answer them in future videos.