When not to mark imports and exports
On certain sheets it's more distracting than useful.
Within the calculation sheets of our model, it's helpful to mark imported links and exported calculations.
There are a few places in our model where this is not helpful.
1. The input sheet
By definition, everything on the input sheet is being exported. It is therefore not useful information to mark everything as an export. We would create a sea of red font (or whatever colour you choose for exports).
2. The financial statements.
Just as everything on the input sheet is exported, everything on the financial statement is imported. Our financial statements will be made up of links to other parts of the model where key line items are calculated. Also, financial statements are more "presentational" sheets than calculation sheets (although several totals are calculated directly on the financial statements themselves). Therefore the import and export marking convention can be more distracting than helpful.
3. The output sheet
Similar to the financial statements, all of the line items that appear on the financial statements are imported. Therefore import marking does not provide useful additional information.
Using Productivity Pack exceptions
The Ctrl+shift+q quick link will automatically format links as import or export. This is helpful most of the time except on sheets where we do not want this formatting. It's possible to configure the macros so that import and/or export marking is not applied to specified sheets. We'll look at that next.
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