Software:List of spreadsheet mistakes

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This is a list of spreadsheet mistakes summarized as a table, including information about when the incident was reported, the organization(s) it involved, a brief description of the incident, and what was the main spreadsheet mistake issue.

A 2017 study concluded that up to 90% of spreadsheets had errors that affected their results.[1] Moreover, a 2026 survey by San Francisco-based business operations software startup DOSS, shows that 22% operation professionals deal with spreadsheet errors every day at work. Of those respondents, 59% say the most common error was manual data entry mistakes and 46% of respondents say that the second most common error was in spreadsheet formulas.[2]

Date Organization Description Issue Ref.
January 1995 Fidelity Investments A $2.6 billion miscalculation after an accountant accountant omitted the minus sign on a net capital loss of $1.3 billion Omitted minus sign [3]
June 2003 TransAlta A $24 million loss from buying more US power transmission hedging contracts at higher prices Cut and paste issue [4]
November 2005 Kodak An $11 million severance error was due to accidentally adding too many zeros to a single employee's accrued severance Manual data entry [5]
October 2008 Barclays Unintentionally revealing 179 contracts Lehman Brothers had intended to trade Hidden columns [6]
July 2011 MI5 A spreadsheet formatting error in 2010 caused MI5 to wrongly collect subscriber data on 134 telephone numbers due to the actual last three digits of telephone numbers being changed to ending in 000 Formatting error [7]
May 2012 JPMorgan Chase A $6 billion loss when a Value-at-Risk model was miscalculated Cut and paste issue [8]
August 2016 N/A Research on estimating that one-fifth of papers with supplementary material containing Excel gene lists to have erroneous gene name conversions Automatic formatting [9][10]
September 2016 Lazard Lazard undervalued SolarCity's valuation by $400 million when performing discounted cash flow valuation analyses Double-counted [11]
October 2020 Public Health England Due to Excel's one million-row spreadsheet limit,15,841 positive Covid tests were left off of the official daily figures Row limits [12]
December 2021 Crypto.com Accidental manual entry caused a $100 refund to be a $10.47 million transfer Manual data entry [13][14]
August 2023 Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) In response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, the PSNI had accidentally shared names and personal details of 10,000 serving police and civilian personnel Overlooked spreadsheet [15][16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Excel errors: How Microsoft's spreadsheet may be hazardous to your health" (in en). https://www.zdnet.com/article/excel-errors-microsofts-spreadsheet-may-be-hazardous-to-your-health/. 
  2. ↑ Eaton, Kit (May 14, 2026). "The $4,300 Spreadsheet Mistake Everyone’s Making". Inc. (magazine). https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/the-4300-spreadsheet-mistake-everyones-making/91345013. 
  3. ↑ Godfrey, Kathy (1995-01-06). "Computing error at Fidelity's Magellan fund" (in en). The RISKS Digest 16 (72). https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/16.72.html#subj1. 
  4. ↑ Cullen, Drew (June 19, 2003). "Excel snafu costs firm $24m" (in en). The Register. https://www.theregister.com/2003/06/19/excel_snafu_costs_firm_24m/. 
  5. ↑ Jelter, Jim (2005-11-10). "Kodak restates, adds $9 million to loss" (in EN-US). https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kodak-restates-earnings-adds-9-million-to-latest-loss. 
  6. ↑ "Barclays Spreadsheet Error Results In Lehman Chaos" (in en-US). Oct 16, 2008. https://www.businessinsider.com/2008/10/barclays-excel-error-results-in-lehman-chaos. 
  7. ↑ Mathieson, S. A. (2011-07-01). "MI5 makes 1,061 bugging errors" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/government-computing-network/2011/jul/01/mi5-data-collection-errors. 
  8. ↑ Whittall, Christopher. "Value-at-Risk model masked JP Morgan $2 bln loss" (in en-US). U.S.. https://www.reuters.com/article/jpmorgan-var-idUSL1E8GBKS920120511. 
  9. ↑ Ziemann, Mark; Eren, Yotam; El-Osta, Assam (2016-08-23). "Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature" (in en). Genome Biology 17 (1). doi:10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7. ISSN 1474-760X. PMID 27552985. 
  10. ↑ "Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates" (in en-US). The Verge. 2020-08-06. https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-rename-microsoft-excel-misreading-dates. 
  11. ↑ Baker, Liana B. (September 1, 2016). "SolarCity adviser Lazard made mistake in Tesla deal analysis". Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/business/solarcity-adviser-lazard-made-mistake-in-tesla-deal-analysis-idUSKCN11635H/. 
  12. ↑ Hern, Alex (2020-10-06). "Covid: how Excel may have caused loss of 16,000 test results in England" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/how-excel-may-have-caused-loss-of-16000-covid-tests-in-england. 
  13. ↑ Taylor, Josh (2023-09-24). "A crypto firm sent a disability worker $10m by mistake. Months later she was arrested at an Australian airport" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/24/a-crypto-firm-sent-a-disability-worker-10m-by-mistake-months-later-she-was-arrested-at-an-australian-airport. 
  14. ↑ Thorne, Simon (2024-01-25). "Spreadsheet errors can have disastrous consequences – yet we keep making the same mistakes" (in en-US). http://theconversation.com/spreadsheet-errors-can-have-disastrous-consequences-yet-we-keep-making-the-same-mistakes-219356. 
  15. ↑ Thorne, Simon (2024-01-25). "Spreadsheet errors can have disastrous consequences – yet we keep making the same mistakes" (in en-US). https://theconversation.com/spreadsheet-errors-can-have-disastrous-consequences-yet-we-keep-making-the-same-mistakes-219356. 
  16. ↑ "PSNI: Major data breach identifies thousands of officers and civilian staff" (in en-GB). 2023-08-08. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-66445452. 



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