Well investment bankers tend to be pretty darn good at excel, and the banks I've been at would scorn you for doing it, as well as all the standardized training given out to fresh recruits to the industry. We had a buy-side deal recently fall through partially because the (fairly sophisticated) model the company selling itself used was absolutely unreadable and unaccountable. They did exactly what you said (naming), including with their assumptions. It was 20 sheets of unpenetrable mass, and we were all turned off by the fact that you couldn't follow it whatsoever, and was basically unaccountable.
>If you really want to use that example, you would click in the formula bar and it will highlight the ranges, and colour code them automatically. If it's on a different sheet, you just hit ctrl + g and type in the name, and it will take you directly to the cell it's linked to (which usually in my case, is linked to a sheet that contains all my model's assumptions in one place, each one with a named range describing what it is). It's much easier and quicker than going to =Assumptions!G52.
This how I can tell you've never seriously worked with excel, because that's MUCH slower than using the native/macabacus auditing tools. Adds up over thousands of times. And what if Sales isn't just a simple cell in another sheet, but is actually tied to a named formula itself, tied to a named formula itself, tied to another worksheet (with named formulas in them!). That's a deep rabbit hole and you to be going down with little transparency, where you're having to look up the formula manager to find whatever the fuck the named variables are actually referring to (what if someone follows your advice and names the tax rate as "Tax" and now ctrl-g doesn't work!)
>Seems like a silly thing to teach people IMO. In my experience it makes formulas much more readable (both writer and reader), makes it much faster to build models, and cuts down errors substantially.
It makes formulas much easier to read, but with zero accountability, and considering someone will very likely be looking at the excel at some point, with no idea what you did, they have to check each and every one out to make sure it's not bullshit. Plus, it doesn't really make modeling faster assuming you've built out your source numbers/assumptions well and use best practices (like A24+A25+A26 instead of A25+A26+A24).
>I personally find that formulas are much easier to review, because the named ranges provide some intent. If someone writes =(A2Assumptions!92)/Assumptions!91 I've got to really unpick it to work out if it's right, but if someone labels it =(A2Miles_Per_Hour)/Average_Miles_Per_Vehicle then I can see that the formula is wrong almost instantly.
Use tracing, and if the assumption tab is well built out it really isn't faster, at all. +alt w,n
>Additionally if I want to write another formula using those values, I can just type it straight into the formula bar without having to go and click on the right cell reference in another sheet.
Use multiple windows, makes life much easier.