Day 1: Clean the cash-book export

What you will be able to do

Turn the text dates, references, categories and amounts of a raw export into clean columns beside it, and flag the duplicate and blank lines, leaving the original untouched.

Larkfield Office Supplies' till software sends its cash-book export on the first working day of each month. It looks like a spreadsheet and behaves like a photograph: the amounts are text, the dates arrive in two layouts and one reference can be spelt four ways. Today you clean it in new columns beside the original, one small move at a time, so the raw lines stay as your evidence. Take as long as you need.

Step 1 of 8 · 1 point

The amount in E2 reads -$2,486.40 and looks like money. In N2, ask Excel whether E2 is a number.