What is that you say?  You already know how to create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet?  Of course you do.  However, there is a big difference between “knowing how to create the spreadsheet that shows how much you spend on snickers each month” and creating a spreadsheet for work.  While the basic mechanics are the same, there are a few guidelines to follow that will make your Excel spreadsheets sharper and more professional looking to your audience.

Here’s a question I pose to you: What do you name your spreadsheet tabs in your workbook?  If your answer is either “?” or “I don’t name them”, then the following advice applies to you:  You should always name your spreadsheet tabs.  Even if they are going to be hidden, they should get a name.  Here are some suggestions on how to name your spreadsheets:

• Use descriptive names.  Don’t use numbers, letters, etc. A bad example would be “A”, “1″, “A2″.  Instead, make it meaningful to what the spreadsheet contains.  If your spreadsheet is an executive summary, label it “Executive Summary”.  One thing to remember is that while you want to make the names descriptive, you shouldn’t make them too elaborate.  Don’t go overboard, Excel has a limit on the number of characters you can use in a name, and this should cause no problem if you have an optimized (for both descriptiveness and length) name picked out.  This also makes it easier to reference cells in the sheet from another sheet, such as using “‘Executive Summary’!C2″.

• If you have to use abbreviations, make sure that they are common in general or common to your audience.  This is not the time to come up with your own unique abbreviation system.  A good way to test this is to bounce the names off of a co-worker who is not as familiar with your work and see if they can figure out what the abbreviations mean.

• Use proper grammar.  At least capitalize the first letter of the first word in the name.  Sometimes I will capitalize the first letter of each word, it really depends on what you’re working on and what your audience likes.

Another way to trim your presentation is to delete any tabs that are empty.  This is a very easy thing to do, but one that I’ve found most people don’t pay attention to.  You want all the focus to be on the tabs with content, you don’t want your audience having to search through empty tabs to get the spreadsheets that are relevant. 

While we’re on the subject of tab management, make sure that your tabs are in a logical order for the information you are presenting.  Don’t put a summary tab in the middle of all of the spreadsheets, nobody will find it and you will just get flooded with emails asking why it isn’t there.

Now that the spreadsheet tabs are straightened out, we can take a look at a few tips for formatting the contents of your spreadsheets.  Here are some useful tips to follow that really won’t take any more time to implement than your current process:

• Make sure that you use the same font type and size for each component of your spreadsheet.  This doesn’t mean that your headers have to be the same size as your data, but make sure that the font is consistent in both your headers and your data separately. Other formatting also applies here, make sure that it is generally consistent.  Obviously if you want to highlight some data with a different format that is fine, just don’t make a mess of all of your content.

• In line with above suggestion, across spreadsheets in a workbook, try to keep the formatting generally the same.  For example, if you use a certain font size, font style, and fill color for header information, try to use that for all header information you create in the workbook.  If you have three spreadsheets that are related because they show the results of a test against three different devices, try to make the formatting on these sheets the same.  A trick I use is to create the initial spreadsheet, and then just copy that sheet and change the relevant parts when you want to make the next one.

• Don’t go crazy with colors and font styles.  Accents are fine, but if you are using more than five colors in a spreadsheet, you are going overboard.

Remember, these are general suggestions, you should tailor them to fit the project you are working on.  However, I believe that if you implement these in your next project, not only will it cut down on the number of drafts that you have to create, but the overall work product created will be at a higher level of quality.