Check My Spreadsheet

Drop an Excel file and get back the mistakes that survive a glance: a total that stops one row short, a number typed over a formula, a figure stored as text that SUM silently skips, a circular reference, a link to a file that isn't there. It runs entirely in your browser — your file is never uploaded.

Quick answer: the three spreadsheet bugs that cost small businesses real money are not exotic — they are a SUM range that was never extended when rows were added (the newest entries drop out of the total), a number typed with a $ sign or from a paste that Excel stores as text (every total quietly excludes it), and a formula overwritten with a typed number that looks right today and never changes again. This page finds all three, plus four more, in seconds.

Drop your .xlsx here, or tap to choose

Excel workbooks up to 25 MB. From Google Sheets: File → Download → Microsoft Excel. Nothing leaves this page.

Seven structural checks on the workbook as saved — not a re-calculation of every formula, and not a judgement on whether your numbers are right. See what this does not catch.

The seven checks, and why each one matters

Every check below is something we have watched go wrong in a real small-business file. None of them shows up as an error message. That is the point — a spreadsheet that displays #REF! gets fixed; a spreadsheet whose total is quietly $77.15 short gets used to file a tax return.

Cells showing an error. #REF!, #DIV/0!, #NAME?, #VALUE!, #N/A. The obvious ones — but a #DIV/0! on a summary tab often means a denominator cell on another tab was cleared, and the summary is the only place it shows.
A SUM that stops one row short. The checker reads every =SUM(C2:C8)-style formula and looks at the cell directly below the range. If row 9 holds a number and the total sits further down, the range was not extended when the row was added. In an expense log the row that falls outside is almost always the most recent one.
A number typed over a formula. When a column holds a run of formulas — a running balance, a margin, a remaining-budget figure — and one cell in the middle of that run is a plain number, someone typed over the formula. It matches today's inputs and will never change again. The checker flags any plain number inside a span of four or more formulas.
A number stored as text. A value pasted from a bank statement, or typed as $1,250.00 with the dollar sign, is text to Excel. SUM, AVERAGE and every chart skip it without a warning. The checker flags text that looks like a number sitting in a column that is otherwise numeric.
Circular references. A cell that refers to itself, or a chain (A depends on B depends on A). Excel shows a status-bar warning most people never read; Google Sheets shows #REF!. The checker traces the dependency graph and reports the chain.
Links to another file. A formula such as ='[Budget 2025.xlsx]Sheet1'!C40 works on the computer where both files live and shows #REF! everywhere else — including your accountant's.
A saved total that does not match the cells it sums. Excel stores each formula's last result inside the file. If a SUM's stored result differs from what its cells actually add to, the file was saved before recalculating (or calculation is set to manual) and whoever opens it in a viewer that does not recalculate — a phone preview, an email attachment pane — sees the stale figure.

A worked example

An expense log with eight entries in C2:C9 and a total of =SUM(C2:C8) in C11. The entries are 184.20, 61.10, "$1,250.00" (typed with the dollar sign), 98.00, 412.75, 233.40, 58.90 and 77.15. The true total is $2,375.50. What the file reports is $1,048.35 — the text-formatted $1,250.00 is skipped by SUM, and the 77.15 on row 9 sits outside the range. Two silent mistakes, together $1,327.15 short, in a file that shows no error anywhere. Both are the second and fourth checks above; drop that file on this page and both are named by cell.

What this does not catch

It does not recompute your formulas — it reads the workbook as saved. So it cannot tell you that a margin formula uses the wrong cell, that a tax rate is last year's, or that a category was mis-typed. It does not parse macros, and it does not open .xls (the 2003 format) or .numbers files. It reports; you decide and fix. For the workbooks we sell, the equivalent check is stricter: every formula is recomputed by an independent engine and compared with a hand-worked answer before the listing goes live — that is what "verified formulas" means on our product pages.

Quick FAQ

Is my file uploaded anywhere?

No. The parser runs in your browser from a script on this site; the file is read from your own disk into memory and discarded when you leave. There is no server on the other end of this page.

Which files work?

.xlsx and .xlsm. From Google Sheets use File → Download → Microsoft Excel, then drop that copy. Numbers and LibreOffice can both export .xlsx.

It says my file has no calculated values. Why?

The file was written by a script or exported without ever being opened in Excel or Sheets, so no formula has a stored result yet. Open it once, let it calculate, save, and check again — the "saved total" check will then run.

It found nothing. Is my spreadsheet correct?

It is free of the seven structural mistakes above, which is worth knowing. It is not proof the arithmetic is right — only a recalculation against known answers can say that.