Troubleshooting a published Excel formula

PeterBartholomew1  You wrote: I found the presentation of the formula to be a mess; I prefer to use defined names.  Thus if 'difference' were

= postTest - preTest

and for 'normalisation' you use 

= IF( difference>0, 100 - preTest, preTest )

the result could be expressed

= IF( difference=0, 0, difference / normalisation )

Since hardly anyone else works this way, do not feel any obligation to change; I certainly won't.

I guess I'm one of those "hardly anyone else" folks. I do use defined names, but usually for something like RateOfReturn in a "what-if" scenario's list of changeable assumptions. You take it a lot further, it appears. I've never thought of doing so to this extent; you really go to the very basic level, from what you're saying here. By that I mean, I might put a label in an adjacent cell (or column heading) that says "PreTest" but it hadn't occurred to me to use range names for whatever content is IN the cell, and doing so across the board. (Of course, if it's an Excel Table, that naming ends up happening by default now, but that's another story.)

You're absolutely right, though: using defined names as a fundamental practice makes formulas like this FAR more comprehensible, and therefore easier to debug. Thanks for speaking up in this connection. You've gained a convert.