Formula vs. Data Overhead

[litrelord]

Hi,

I have two tables which share some common data and I was wondering if I'd save any overhead in the workbook by transferring some fo this data to a separate table and using vlookups to retrieve it instead fo having all of the raw data repeated. I've tried both and haven't seen any noticeable difference yet but as the workbook grows it may become more apparent so I'd like to make any changes I can whilst it's still in it's infancy.

The data tables that contain this data/formulas will have a variety of pivots/sumifs/countifs depending on them (not sure if that makes any difference).

I tried searching here and google to find some stats regarding data vs. formulas in regards to file size and processing time but couldn't find any. I may, of course, be searching for the wrong terms!

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

Nick

 

[litrelord]

OK, seems all I needed to do was write out this question to realise it was quite simple to find out myself!

Cell A1 with data and the rest of row 1 pointing to it vs. the whole of row 1 containing the same data gives a file twice the size!

So flat data, even if repeated often, works better than a formula.

Think I got carried away thinking in terms of relational databases and tried to normalize my spreadsheet

Thanks for reading anyway

Nick