What's the need for an About sheet?

Landing in a larger Excel workbook for the first time can be pretty disorienting. There can be many sheets, lots of data, and documentation / explanation is often lacking. Furthermore, certain information - like the version history or the spreadsheet's creator - is often omitted altogether. Having a standardised process for including this kind of data can go a long way towards making it easier for future users of your spreadsheets to get on with things. Even if you aren't expecting others to use it, a good About sheet can be a lifesaver if you have to pick up a long-dormant project of your own.

What should be included in an About sheet?

The exact contents will vary depending on your organisation's size, the spreadsheet's size and purpose, and who the spreadsheet will be distributed to. Below is a shopping list of different inclusions, roughly ranked in order of how likely to be needed they are.

Spreadsheet's name, purpose, and version number

This is the absolute essentials - and should always be included. As well as a version number, you may wish to include a version history - i.e. a list of the major changes from version to version - to help people identify what version they need to use.

Creator's details

This might be the organisation, or the specific creator, including contact details. This gives future users a possibility of contacting you to ask questions about your work.

Workbook contents index

Consider including a list of all the worksheets within the workbook, with a brief explanation of the purpose of each and how it is connected to other sheets. You can use hyperlinks to link the index into a clickable map that will take the user directly to the sheet they are interested in. More information on how to create a hyperlinked table of contents using VBA is covered in tip #263, while friend of the community David Benaim has produced a video showing how new Excel functionality can be used to build a dynamic table of contents in Excel with formulas.

Summary of error checks

If the workbook is of any significant size and/or complexity, it should contain error checks throughout. A summary of these should be clearly shown on the landing page - either showing the error status tab-by-tab, or if appropriate just a whole-of-workbook summary.

Instructions about use

If there are any particular instructions the user should know, list them. For example - how can they add new data? How can they update any charts or PivotTables within the workbook? Where can they see the options for any dropdown menus? Is there any part of the workbook they should not change or move?

Key to formats

If consistent formatting for different types of cells (e.g. inputs, calculations, outputs) is used, consider including a key explaining which is which.

Scope / assumptions

If the workbook is a model of some kind, then the landing page is a good place to list any key assumptions or limitations in scope that might be relevant - you don't want the user to falsely assume that the model is relevant to their scenario if it might not be.

Other information

There are plenty of other things that you might want to put on your landing page! A landing page is one of the Twenty principles for good spreadsheet practice and should be kept in mind when considering good design and format.