My entire inventory tracking spreadsheet broke yesterday and now I don't know what I have in stock

I spent the last 6 months building this huge Google Sheets thing with color coded cells and formulas linking everything together. Had it set up perfect where I could scan a part number and it would subtract from inventory automatically. Then yesterday I accidentally sorted a column wrong and every single formula got messed up. The cross references stopped working, the totals went to zero, and I can't figure out where the break started. My buddy told me to just start over but that's like 200 hours of work down the drain. Has anyone else had a spreadsheet implode on them like that? How do you even fix something that tangled?

2 comments

2 Comments

janaw118d ago

Take a deep breath and don't delete anything yet. I've had this happen twice with my small business inventory sheets. The trick is to undo as far back as you can, then check the sheet's version history in Google Sheets. Click File, then Version History, and look for the last time your totals were correct. You can restore just that one part without losing everything else you've done since.

willow6728d ago

Version history is the only reason I haven't thrown my laptop out a window at least three times this year. The first time I had a spreadsheet meltdown I sat there staring at the screen for a solid five minutes like it personally offended me. Eventually I learned to just go back and grab the old totals without touching anything else. It's still a gamble every time I hit undo more than twice though, feels like playing roulette with my data.