Impact Analysis

This article describes Impact Analysis, its feature and functionalities.

What is Impact Analysis?

Impact Analysis is a functionality that allows for quick and easy navigation around the spreadsheet to find cell references and cell bindings. Spreadsheets can quickly become complex and detailed, and with components interconnected with bindings and data insertion, it's often difficult to keep track of what is pointing where.

How does Impact Analysis work?

Impact Analysis can be triggered by right-clicking on a single cell. The context menu will appear and there will be two options at the bottom:

1. Inspect Bindings

2. Inspect Cell References

Both options will be greyed out if nothing is pointing to this cell, i.e. no other cells that reference this cell, or nothing has been bound to this cell.

It is important to note that Impact Analysis only functions when selecting a single cell. You cannot select a range and right-click to analyse. However, you can select a single cell within that range to perform any analysis.

Inspect Bindings

Inspect Bindings is available to select when a cell has a component, function or connection property bound to it, either as a single cell or as part of a range.

If a cell hasn't been bound to any component, function or connection, then the 'Inspect Bindings' property will be disabled.

After the 'Inspect Bindings' option has been selected, the spreadsheet will change to the Impact Analysis panel. This panel will display all available components, functions or connections that have been bound to this particular cell. There are a few things to note:

1. Identifier - this section identifies which cell is being inspected

2. Search objects - this bar allows for specific object searching. This can return items based on component/function/connection type, or by custom name.

3. Filter - this section allows for filtering of the listed items into different categories, as well as a count of how many of each there are.

4. Components list - this section lists the components/functions/connections that are associated with the inspected cell. The list will update when filtered or searched.

When an item in the list is selected, it will be highlighted in blue, and the Component Tree will automatically navigate to the chosen component. The Properties Panel will then highlight the specific property that has been bound to that cell.

Inspect Cell References

Inspect Cell references is the second option in the list. This aspect of Impact Analysis allows you to navigate through the spreadsheet to find other cells and formulas that point to, or are pointed to by, this specific cell.

Once selected from the spreadsheet context menu, the spreadsheet will switch to the Cell References panel and will become uninteractable. There are a few things to note:

1. Identifier - this section identifies which cell is being inspected

2. Cell Value - this identifies the current value of the cell.

3. References - this list identifies the list of cells that the analysed cell points to

4. Referenced by - this list identifies the list of cells that the analysed cell is being referenced by.

In this example above, we can see that cell B2 references C2, and is being referenced by cell B3.

When either of these options is selected, the spreadsheet below will update and now analyse the selected cell. For example, if Sheet1!B3 was selected, then the spreadsheet will point to cell B3 and analyse the cell references of that specific cell: