Data Organization in Spreadsheets
Data Organization in Spreadsheets is a paper with some excellent tips:
- Be Consistent
- Choose Good Names for Things
- Write Dates as YYYY-MM-DD
- No Empty Cells
- Put Just One Thing in a Cell
- Make it a Rectangle
- Create a Data Dictionary
- No Calculations in the Raw Data Files
- Do Not Use Font Color or Highlighting as Data
- Make Backups
- Use Data Validation to Avoid Errors
- Save the Data in Plain Text Files