Understanding Complex Spreadsheets With “Slate”

I don’t know if this has happened to you before but I can tell you that it’s a major challenge when you open a spreadsheet built by someone else and try to see where numbers come from. Yes, there are some Excel built-in functions that can help but it’s very difficult to use honestly. A few weeks ago I looked into “Slate”, an Excel add-in that makes that whole task a lot easier. It gives you a better understanding of the numbers that were used to get to a sum. It adds it in a visual way as you can see here:

As the spreadsheet becomes more complicated, so does the Slate chart as you can see here:

I simply installed the add-in (you get a free licence for now), opened a spreadsheet and saw this:

Then I clicked on that Slate button and got this, which I can dig into:

I’d be curious to hear from any of you that have tried this or are considering it? Just to confirm, I’m not being paid to write this, even if you try it:) It is just a very interesting product in my opinion. You can try it at UseSlate.com