Excel 2013 Spreadsheet Inquire
This work is incremental, focusing on improving spreadsheet auditing tools for users of Microsoft Excel.
The paper examines the Excel 2013 Inquire add-in for spreadsheet auditing, comparing its features with similar third-party tools and proposing enhancements, including a free helper add-in to address a major shortcoming.
Excel 2013 (version 15) includes an add-in "Inquire" for auditing spreadsheets. We describe the evolution of such tools in the third-party marketplace and assess the usefulness of Microsoft's own add-in in this context. We compare in detail the features of Inquire with similar products and make suggestions for how it could be enhanced. We offer a free helper add-in that in our opinion corrects one major shortcoming of Inquire.