List of spreadsheet mistakes

A 2017 study concluded that up to 90% of spreadsheets had errors that affected their results.[1]

Below is a list of examples of spreadsheet mistakes that are caused by a variety of reasons.

Date Organization Description Issue Reference
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 [2]
June 2003 TransAlta A $24 million loss from buying more US power transmission hedging contracts at higher prices Cut and paste issue [3]
October 2008 Barclays Unintentionally revealing 179 contracts Lehman Brothers had intended to trade Hidden columns [4]
May 2012 JPMorgan Chase A $6 billion loss when a Value-at-Risk model was miscalculated Cut and paste issue [5]
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 [6][7]
December 2021 Crypto.com Accidental manual entry caused a $100 refund to be a $10.47 million transfer Manual data entry [8][9]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Excel errors: How Microsoft's spreadsheet may be hazardous to your health". ZDNET. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  2. ^ Neumann, Peter G. (1995-01-06). "The RISKS Digest, Volume 16 Issue 72". The RISKS Digest, Volume 16 Issue 72. 16 (72).
  3. ^ Cullen, Drew (June 19, 2003). "Excel snafu costs firm $24m". The Register. Archived from the original on 2025-09-08. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  4. ^ "Barclays Spreadsheet Error Results In Lehman Chaos". Business Insider. Oct 16, 2008. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  5. ^ Whittall, Christopher. "Value-at-Risk model masked JP Morgan $2 bln loss". U.S. Archived from the original on 2023-03-29. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  6. ^ Ziemann, Mark; Eren, Yotam; El-Osta, Assam (2016-08-23). "Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature". Genome Biology. 17 (1) 177. doi:10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7. ISSN 1474-760X. PMC 4994289. PMID 27552985.
  7. ^ "Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates". The Verge. 2020-08-06. Archived from the original on 2022-12-17. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  8. ^ Taylor, Josh (2023-09-24). "A crypto firm sent a disability worker $10m by mistake. Months later she was arrested at an Australian airport". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  9. ^ Thorne, Simon (2024-01-25). "Spreadsheet errors can have disastrous consequences – yet we keep making the same mistakes". The Conversation. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
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