Why this matters
Most spreadsheet problems in offices are not formula problems. They are layout problems. A manager asks "how many bags of rice did we sell in March?" and nobody can answer quickly because the sheet has merged cells, totals typed in the middle and three different spellings of "rice". If you enter data tidily from the start, every later skill in this track (functions, PivotTables, charts, Power BI) becomes easy.
The rules of a tidy table
- One row per record. Each sale, each beneficiary, each stock item gets its own row.
- One column per detail. Date in one column, item in another, quantity in another.
- One header row at the top, with short, clear column names.
- One kind of value per column. A Quantity column holds only numbers. Write
5in Quantity and "bags" in a separate Unit column, not "5 bags" in one cell, because Excel cannot add up text. - No merged cells, no blank rows, no totals in the middle. Put totals in a separate summary area or sheet.
- Consistent spellings. "Rice", "Rice " (with a hidden space at the end) and "Ryce" look alike to you but are three different values to Excel. Excel ignores capital letters when it counts and groups, but it does not ignore extra spaces or typos.