Where is the source file of that data?

On my job I usually have to present data-rich slides that are the result of analysis on sets of data. One of my pet peeves on this types of slides is the omission of the data source. As I always point out to analysts in training, *please* do yourself a favor: put the footnote with the source. You’ll be happy when 5 months later you are asked to support some results of your analysis.

That answers the question “What is the source of your data?”. More often than not, when you have to support your analysis, its also handy to know “Where is the source of my data?”. My recommendation decks are usually in Powerpoint, and I only sparringly use Office’s embedded file feature, so what is on the slide is just a picture of the spreadsheet, chart or table.

My source notes usually look as shown below:

The way I recommend analysts in training to do it is through the CELL function in Excel.

=CELL("filename")

The formula above will print the whole path and filename of the file. If you want only the filename, you can use

MID(LEFT(CELL("filename",A1), FIND("]", CELL("filename", A1))- 1), FIND("[",CELL("filename", A1))+1, 255)

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