New Excel add-in

FormulaMapper. Explain, audit, and risk-score any Excel workbook.

A free Microsoft Excel ribbon add-in that reads any sheet you open and answers the questions that take an analyst hours: what does this formula do?, what is broken?, where are the hidden hardcodes?, how clean is this model?

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Download FormulaMapper.xlam ~384 KB · Excel 2016+ / Mac Excel 16+

On the roadmap: Excel for Web (Office.js) and Google Sheets versions. The current build is desktop Excel only because it uses the full COM/VBA object model to walk precedents, time recalc, and paint cells across whole sheets. The web rewrite is in early scoping. Subscribers above hear about it first.

Group 1. Explain

Review Formula

Opens a popup with the active cell's formula and an expandable precedent tree. Each node shows its value and role; click to highlight its fragment and jump to the source cell.

Plain-English Explain

Describes the active cell's formula as a plain-English sentence. Useful when you inherit a model and stare at =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(MATCH(...))) for the first time.

Trace Dependents + Ask AI

Shows which cells depend on the active cell across all sheets as a tree. Ask AI sends only the formula text (never your data) to the analyzer.

Group 2. Understand

Onboarding Brief

For a workbook you didn't build: one click produces a plain-English brief covering what the sheet does, key outputs, calculation drivers, read-order, and top risks.

Sheet Map + Contents

Renders how the workbook's sheets reference each other as a node diagram with an edge list. Generates a hyperlinked index of sheets, named ranges, and tables.

Calc Timing + Object Links

Ranks sheets by recalculation time to find bottlenecks. Lists which cells feed charts, pivots, validation, controls, and conditional formatting.

Group 3. Check

Risk Dashboard

Scans the active sheet and lists every quality issue in one panel: circular refs, errors with origin, inconsistencies, hardcodes, broken links, volatiles, SUM-gaps, sign checks, simplification ideas, sorted worst-first.

Find Hardcodes + Inconsistencies

Flags numeric literals other than 0 or 1 buried inside formulas. Flags cells whose formula breaks the pattern of their row or column neighbours.

Stress Test + Compliance Score

Perturbs each input and reports which outputs break. Scores the sheet 0-100 against FAST/SMART-style modelling standards with a grade and recommendations.

Export HTML Report

Writes a self-contained HTML quality report next to the workbook and opens it. Sharable with reviewers, auditors, or your team without sending the original file.

Install in 3 steps

Sign in above and download FormulaMapper.xlam (about 384 KB).
Move the file to your Excel add-ins folder: Windows is typically %AppData%\Microsoft\AddIns\, Mac is ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Add-Ins/.
Enable in Excel: open Excel, go to File → Options → Add-Ins → Manage: Excel Add-ins → Go..., check the box next to FormulaMapper, click OK. The new Formula Mapper ribbon tab appears.

Trouble shooting: if Excel says the file is blocked, right-click the .xlam file, choose Properties, tick "Unblock" at the bottom, then re-enable in Excel. This is standard for VBA add-ins downloaded from the internet.