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microsoft / advanced-formula-environment

Create, edit, and reuse formulas in Excel
https://aka.ms/get-afe
MIT License
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[Improvement] Suggestion: show tooltip with cell values when hovering over references, as in the formula bar #87

Open santiago-afonso opened 2 weeks ago

santiago-afonso commented 2 weeks ago

Hello. Just a small suggestion. It greatly help formula debugging if the AFE replicated this functionality of the formula bar on hover (https://insider.microsoft365.com/en-us/blog/check-your-formula-with-value-preview-tooltips-in-excel):

image

Currently that capability is unused for cell references (although it is used for formulas).

image

Thanks!!

jack-williams commented 2 weeks ago

Adding as an enhancement. It would be interested to learn when you prefer using the tooltips vs the built-in AFE debugger.

santiago-afonso commented 2 weeks ago

It would be interested to learn when you prefer using the tooltips vs the built-in AFE debugger.

Very, very often I get into one of these situations:

  1. the The formula uses spilled (dynamic) arrays, which are not yet supported by the debugger. error (eg. https://github.com/microsoft/advanced-formula-environment/issues/83#issuecomment-2105098171, although I never understood Nick's reply), or image
  2. Something along the lines of "the number of cells exceeds the debugger's limits" then a medium-sized range is passed as a parameter.

In either of those situations, the AFE debugger can't help at all. The Evaluate Formula can, but is cumbersome due to its small size and the need to go through every single step. Using the tooltips in the formula bar is quicker, and unlike the AFE, works in these situations which I encounter very often.

I don't understand the nature of the spilled arrays error, but it seems that it pops-up in the kind of situations where the AFE is most useful: in complex calculations involving Excel's new array-calculating formulas.