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

• Model risk § Spreadsheet Errors
• Spreadsheet § Spreadsheet risk

External links

• EuSPRIG Horror Stories - European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group
• Data Organization in Spreadsheets for Ecologists

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). 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.