Yes I recognize this problem in my organization as well. I think this is feasible, and tools in this direction exist already, like https://formulas.readthedocs.io/en/stable/doc.html. I think one challenge is that the variable names in Excel (B3, B2-10 for a list) are not easily converted to descriptive names.
>I think one challenge is that the variable names in Excel (B3, B2-10 for a list) are not easily converted to descriptive names.
It takes some getting used to, but you can pretty easily create a named range for an individual cell by modifying the value immediately left of the formula bar. You can also setup a table to hold data (insert -> table).
Tables can be renamed and allow formulas like =sum(tbl_salaries[salary]).
With named ranges, your formula can look like =purchase_price*sales_tax
Thank you! I was hoping for a reply like this. The naming is actually (in big corp) a non-problem. I even think many finance workers dislike these models as well, so this isn’t even a bad chore. The models we run have tops a few hundred inputs, many ranged. That’s an hour or two of puzzling.
