Organising data in Spreadsheets : Part-II

Data Organization in Spreadsheets (Part-II)

Continuing with my earlier blog with the below link; I am adding a few more points in this new blog.

- Choose Good Names for Things.

It is important to pick good names for things. This can be hard, and so it is worth putting some time and thought into it. 

As a general rule, do not use spaces, either in variable names or file names. They make programming harder: the analyst will need to surround everything in double quotes, like ”Health Care”, rather than just writing Health_Care. Where you might use spaces, use underscores or perhaps hyphens - pick one and be consistent. 

Avoid special characters, except for underscores and hyphens. Other symbols ($, @, %, #, &, *, (, ), !, /, etc.) often have special meaning in programming languages, and so they can be harder to handle. They are also a bit harder to type. 

- Choose Good Names for Things.

The main principle in choosing names, whether for variables or for file names, is short, but meaningful. So not too short. Finally, never include “final” in a file name. You will invariably end up with “final_ver2.” 

- Write Dates as YYYY-MM-DD.

When entering dates, please consider using the global “ISO 8601” standard, YYYY-MM-DD, such as 2013-02-27. Or be consistent with the date format for your region. 

- No Empty Cells Fill in all cells. 

Use some common code to fill missing data. 

- Put Just One Thing in a Cell.

The cells in your spreadsheet should each contain one piece of data. Do not put more than one thing in a cell. For example do not write employee name and ID in one cell. 

- Put Just One Thing in a Cell.

Finally, do not merge cells. 

It might look pretty, but you end up breaking the rule of no empty cells. Also it is not clear how to divide the number in the merged cell in to its constituent cells.

Further reading: For the third part and final part refer to the link given below.

Part III post.