Your help is needed! Excel and PowerPoint add-ins: best practices

[MagaliP]

Hi all,

I am reaching out to the Community to get your input about best practices for the Excel and PowerPoint add-ins. Please share your tips and tricks to make the use of the add-ins as efficient as possible! The suggested themes are:

• Governance of the add-in: upgrade process, version control, COE management of the add-in, training requirements...
• Excel / PowerPoint best practices: formula references, name ranges...
• Add-in best practices: set up the Anaplan model, modules and views for best add-in performance
• Creative usage: use the Excel add-in to create Word and PowerPoint documents...

These are the points I have in mind so far, feel free to comment on them too:

1. When you upgrade to a new version, take a copy of the file beforehand and refresh this copy. This will prevent compatibility issues: once refreshed with a new version, workbooks/slides are not compatible with previous versions of the add-in
2. Avoid using the name ranges defined by Anaplan, instead create your own name ranges and make those formula-driven with an offset function so they automatically adjust when rows/columns are added to your data

I am looking forward to hearing from you!

[CallumW]

I would add to check the release notes and known issues pages before updating (perhaps release notes can be featured on the downloads page for easier referencing).

I recently came across something that meant I had to completely reinstall the software, which also caused some further issues, I would have probably not updated that week due to amount of work I had to do!

Thanks to @MagaliP  for coming to my aid on the forum!