Well, not you exactly, but rather the numbers you’ve been keying into your worksheet.

As much as we all love our Monarch, nearly everyone who’s worked with Excel has at some point keyed in a somewhat lengthy list of values. And there’s a good chance that your accuracy level is inversely proportional to the length of the list.

So what happens?

You get to the end and you create the inevitable SUM formula to verify that the total of what you’ve entered matches the total found on your source document. If you’re skilled, your total matches and you’re done. But if (when?) it doesn’t, one of two things likely happens: 1) you spend a long time reviewing the list comparing the document to the screen, probably using a ruler and a pen, or 2) the faster method wherein you find someone to help you and one of you reads back the list while the other reviews the screen.

There’s a better way. Excel can actively help you with this type of work.

Before you begin keying the numbers, go to the View menu (Excel 2003). First select Toolbars, and then “Text to Speech”.

Speak Friend, and Enter

The rightmost icon is “Speak on Enter”. Click it to activate this mode. If all is well, you’ll hear an audio prompt indicating that speech mode is ready.

Proceed with keying your values and when the inevitable error occurs you’ll know it right away.

If you’ve already keyed all of the values before engaging speech mode, or you’ve received the spreadsheet from someone else, just highlight the range of values that you want to check and click the leftmost icon on the Text to Speech toolbar: Speak Cells. Excel will cycle through your selection cell by cell, reading the values back to you so that you can keep your eyes on your source document.

Either method is much less frustrating than reviewing all of those numbers on your own.

Of course, if you need to review a list of numbers that exist in another format, like a PDF file or an Access table, you could always whip up a quick model and Excel with Monarch!