A formula that was overwritten with a typed number still shows a number. A link to a file on somebody else's drive still shows the last value it saw. A column where one cell was edited by hand looks exactly like a column where none was.
This reads the formulas rather than the values, which is the only way to see any of it. Your file is opened in your browser and never uploaded.
Most files are fine and want tidying rather than replacing. Some have outgrown what a spreadsheet can safely do, usually when several people need it at once or when one mistake is expensive. That is what our Excel automation work is about, and the honest answer is often that fixing what you have is cheaper.
Built by Lexalytic. See our other free tools.
The visible errors are easy: anything showing a hash error can be found with Go To Special. The dangerous ones are invisible, because they show a perfectly reasonable number. A formula overwritten with a typed value, a column where one cell was edited by hand, a link to a workbook that no longer exists still displaying the last value it saw. Finding those means reading the formulas rather than the values, which is what this tool does.
A formula pasted over with a typed number. Somebody checks a figure, types what they think it should be, and that row stops calculating. Nothing on screen indicates it, the total still updates, and the error survives every review because the cell looks identical to the ones around it.
No. The file is opened and read in your browser and never sent to a server. Macros are not executed. This matters because a business spreadsheet usually contains exactly the information you would not want to email to a website.
Several free browser tools now scan for formula errors, external links, hardcoded values and circular references, and this one does too. What the free tools do not do is trace what depends on what across the whole workbook. That has until now meant a desktop add in at two hundred and fifty to two thousand pounds a year. The paid version here does it in the browser for twenty nine pounds, and writes it up as a handover document, because the question that matters is not what is in the spreadsheet but what breaks if one number changes.
A rate written inside a formula is invisible and unmaintainable. When VAT changes or a margin is revised, somebody has to find every formula containing the old figure, and they will miss some. Moving the number to a labelled cell makes it one edit rather than a search, and makes the assumption visible to anyone reading the file.