Comprehensive review for common types of errors using spreadsheets

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive review of various approaches for detecting and fixing errors in spreadsheets, highlighting common user mistakes and current research methods.

Contribution

It classifies and discusses recent research approaches for spreadsheet error detection and correction, emphasizing common user errors and existing tools.

Findings

Many spreadsheets contain errors affecting data integrity.

Current tools focus on error detection and correction.

End users frequently make specific types of errors.

Abstract

Thanks to their flexibility and capability to perform different tasks and organize data in the best form and format, spreadsheets are widely used in different organizations and by different end users. Many business organizations rely on spreadsheets to fulfill their various tasks. On the other hand, the number of spreadsheets that contain errors are very high, thus researchers have developed different tools aimed at the prevention, detection, and correction of errors in spreadsheets. This research work is a comprehensive review that describes and classifies approaches on finding and fixing errors in spreadsheets. The paper discusses up-to-date research work approaches in terms of definition, how they work, and kinds of errors they can find in spreadsheets. The paper looks also for the kinds of errors that end users commonly make in spreadsheets.