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Misinformation From TechRepublic

Last year I noted that information published at TechRepublic might not be very trustworthy. See When A Tip Is Not A Tip.

Here's another article with a useful-sounding title that contains inaccurate and unhelpful content: Four ways to speed up Excel calculation time.

The author writes:

Avoid complex and array formulas. Use more rows and columns to store intermediate values and use fewer complex calculations.

I've found that complex formulas (including array) formulas usually calculate faster than using intermediate formulas. And the file size is also much smaller.

Reduce the number of references in each formula to the bare minimum.

I don't know too many people who use non-essential references in a formula.

Always use the most efficient function possible.

Great advice, but how many times do you have a choice? And how do you know which is more efficient.

Replace a slow array with a user-defined function,

It's very unlikely that a UDF written in VBA will be faster than an array formula.

Avoid volatile functions if possible.

Functions such as RAND and NOW will never have a noticeable effect on calculation time.

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Here's another worthless article by the same author: Use VBA to return the next Saturday.

She presents a VBA function to do the work of a simple formula. Why? Apparently, TechRepublic is desperate for content to accompany their ads, and quality doesn't matter.