List of spreadsheet mistakes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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] |