Documentation
How the Ask Eijaz companion workbooks are built — the colour rules, the 2016/365 tab pairs, how to put your own data in without breaking anything, and what to do when something goes wrong.
Everything below applies to the companion workbook that comes with any Ask Eijaz book. Each
workbook also has a 00 Start Here tab that says the same things in the file itself.
Opening the files
You get two files: a PDF and an Excel workbook (.xlsx).
- Excel 2016 or later, on Windows or Mac. Excel 365 gets extra tabs; see below.
- No macros, no add-ins, no Power Query. Nothing to enable, nothing to trust, nothing your IT department has to approve.
- Google Sheets and LibreOffice will open the workbook and most of it will calculate, but neither reproduces Excel’s dynamic arrays faithfully. The 2016-compatible tabs are your safest route there.
If Excel opens the file in Protected View, that’s Windows being careful about a download, not a problem with the file. Click Enable Editing.
The colour rules
One rule covers the whole workbook:
Blue means type here. Everything else is calculated.
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Blue | An input. Yours to change. |
| Grey / white | Calculated. Leave it alone and it looks after itself. |
| Green | A check passed. |
| Amber | Look at this. |
| Red | Something is wrong. |
Tabs come in pairs
Every chapter tab exists twice.
- A navy tab works in Excel 2016 and later. One formula per row, no modern functions.
- The gold tab beside it, marked
365, does the identical job with spilled formulas — one formula for a whole column.
Both tabs in a pair always produce the same answers. They exist so you can see the same problem solved both ways, and use whichever your build supports.
If you open a 365 tab on Excel 2016 you’ll see _xlfn. names and #NAME? errors. That is the
version gap made visible, not a corrupt file. Stay on the navy tabs.
Putting your own data in
The workbooks ship filled with sample data so everything calculates the moment you open them. To use your own:
- Replace the data on the source tabs (in Make It Match,
01 Invoicesand02 Receipts). Keep the column order. - Clear cells with Delete — never Cut.
Ctrl+Xdrags formulas along with the cells and silently repoints them somewhere else. - Never delete rows, columns or sheets. Formulas point at them and will turn into
#REF!. Clear the contents instead. - Fewer rows than the sample? Clear the surplus rows. The formulas return blanks rather than errors — that’s deliberate.
- More rows? Copy the last formula row down as far as you need.
- Finish on the checks tab. If it doesn’t say
ALL CHECKS PASSED, the work isn’t done.
Why the sample data is messy
It’s meant to be. The workbooks ship with amounts stored as text, trailing spaces in names, duplicate reference numbers, references with no number in them, a payment and its reversal, and cash that landed on the wrong side of a cutoff.
None of that is a mistake. All of it is taught in the book, because all of it is in your files.
When something goes wrong
#REF! everywhere. A row, column or sheet was deleted. Undo it, or start from a fresh copy —
keep the original download somewhere safe.
#NAME? on a 365 tab. Your Excel doesn’t have that function. Use the paired navy tab.
Numbers show as text, left-aligned. That’s usually your data, not the workbook — and it’s a problem the books cover directly.
Everything shows zero. Check that calculation is set to Automatic: Formulas → Calculation Options → Automatic.
A total looks wrong. Go to the checks tab first. It’s designed to tell you where the problem is rather than just that there is one.
Still stuck?
The FAQ covers the common ones. Anything else, get in touch and include the book, the tab and the cell — that’s usually enough to answer it in one reply.