My lunch break coding fix that saved a whole report

I was sitting at my desk around 1 PM yesterday trying to finish a monthly report for my boss. The spreadsheet kept freezing every time I tried to sort the data, and I had no idea why. After restarting three times, I noticed there were like 50 hidden columns with old formulas clogging everything up. I deleted them all in one go and the file worked fine after that. Took me maybe 10 minutes total, but I almost gave up and started from scratch. Has anyone else had a dumb fix like that save them from redoing hours of work?

3 comments

3 Comments

parkerbrown19d ago

Wait, 50 hidden columns isn't really a "dumb fix" though, right? Figuring out what's actually bogging down a file takes some pretty solid troubleshooting.

spencer_park2620d ago

50 hidden columns sounds like a nightmare but honestly was it really that big of a deal? You fixed it in 10 minutes, that’s hardly a story worth telling.

diana61720d ago

Used to roll my eyes at stuff like this too, honestly. I figured if a fix only took ten minutes then it wasn't even worth mentioning. But then I spent TWO HOURS rebuilding a whole project from scratch once only to find out later it was just a stupid formatting glitch I could have fixed in five minutes. So yeah, this kind of thing is actually a HUGE deal when you think about all the time it saved you. Sometimes the smallest dumb fix is the one that keeps you from a total meltdown later.