RANGE NAMES - A Risky Practice in Spreadsheet Development?

Ruth McKeever, Kevin McDaid

2011

Abstract

The use of range names to improve spreadsheet development is advocated by both academics and practitioners, however there is a clear absence of supporting scientific evidence. This paper describes the latest in a series of experiments that examine the impact of range name structures on spreadsheet reliability, and formula development time. The aim of this paper is to compare the reliability of simple spreadsheet formulas developed by intermediate users through both cell references and range names. The results are consistent with the findings of previous experiments that, contrary to widespread opinion, the use of range names does not improve the quality of spreadsheets.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

McKeever R. and McDaid K. (2011). RANGE NAMES - A Risky Practice in Spreadsheet Development? . In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT, ISBN 978-989-8425-76-8, pages 269-274. DOI: 10.5220/0003510202690274

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icsoft11,
author={Ruth McKeever and Kevin McDaid},
title={RANGE NAMES - A Risky Practice in Spreadsheet Development?},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT,},
year={2011},
pages={269-274},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0003510202690274},
isbn={978-989-8425-76-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies - Volume 1: ICSOFT,
TI - RANGE NAMES - A Risky Practice in Spreadsheet Development?
SN - 978-989-8425-76-8
AU - McKeever R.
AU - McDaid K.
PY - 2011
SP - 269
EP - 274
DO - 10.5220/0003510202690274