Spreadsheet Rescue — Formula and #REF! Repair, 48 Hours
You send me the broken file, I send it back working. Usually the same day, always within 48 hours.
Somebody deleted a column in March. Nobody noticed. The formulas that pointed at it went to #REF!, the total at the bottom quietly became a different number, and by the time you looked at it properly you had already sent three invoices from it. That is almost always what has happened. It is not a disaster and it is not your fault.
What I fix
- Error values everywhere — #REF!, #VALUE!, #DIV/0!, #N/A, #NAME?. Traced back to the change that caused them rather than patched over, because a patched #REF! comes back next month.
- Lookups that stopped matching — VLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH and XLOOKUP failing on a trailing space, a number stored as text, or a renamed heading.
- Totals that do not add up — a SUM that misses the last row, a range that never grew, a double-counted line. I tell you the size of the gap.
- A file that takes forever to open — volatile formulas, whole-column ranges, thousands of unused formatted rows, hidden links to closed workbooks.
- Dates and numbers behaving as text — the single most common reason a total is wrong while nothing looks broken.
- Broken conditional formatting and dropdowns — rules pointing at deleted ranges, validation lists that no longer match.
- Merged cells and structure damage — sorting that scrambles rows, filters that only cover half the table.
- Excel and Google Sheets differences — formulas one program understood and the other did not.
How it works
You order and message me the file, attached to an Etsy message or as a link. Tell me in one sentence what it is supposed to do and where you first noticed it was wrong. Within a few hours I open it, find what caused the breakage rather than just the symptom, and message you what I have found. The fixed file comes back within 48 hours.
It comes back looking like yours
Not rebuilt into my style, because you have to keep using it on Monday and everyone else in the office already knows where things are. With it comes a written note listing everything I found, what I changed, and anything I noticed that is not broken yet but will be.
Works with
Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc. If a file turns out to be beyond repair — genuinely corrupt rather than merely broken — I will tell you that instead of charging you for guesswork, and you get a refund.
If I cannot fix it, you get a refund. Buy it on Etsy — $28
Ordered through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the payment and the buyer protection are handled by Etsy. I answer every message myself.
All made-to-order work is listed on the Made to Order page.