Inherited somebody else's spreadsheets? Looking to untangle a monster? One of the most challenging tasks for actuaries is to take a spreadsheet already in production and try to do something useful with it - especially if this is a standard spreadsheet that has accumulated years of changes from multiple authors. And especially if one small change appears to break everything.

This session will cover auditing, testing, and fixing extant spreadsheets with a special focus on actuarial needs and issues, as well as specific practical implementation tips.

Specific topics to be covered include:

• A methodical approach to auditing spreadsheets
• Creating formulae and names inventories
• VBA code for finding spurious cells, and why one wants to minimize such cells
• Untangling megaformulas
• Approaches to spreadsheet testing, derived from software testing principles