There's a big difference between a reference you bookmark and a reference you actually use. The user who posted this project understands that distinction, and it's worth paying attention to. They're building a structured spreadsheet where each row captures a formula, feature, or shortcut, paired with a plain-English explanation and a difficulty ranking. That's not just a glossary. It's a tool designed for retrieval, not decoration. And the honest admission that they're "limited by [their] own imagination" is exactly the kind of humility that makes this approach more useful than most corporate documentation.
What this means in practical terms is simple: a reference that works has to meet you where you are. Most spreadsheets users don't need a list of every function ever written. They need to find the one that solves the problem in front of them, right now. A difficulty ranking, for instance, lets someone skip past VLOOKUP nested in INDEX-MATCH when all they want is a quick SUMIF. Plain-English explanations remove the friction of decoding Microsoft's help pages. This isn't about cataloging knowledge for its own sake. It's about making that knowledge findable and actionable. If you've ever spent fifteen minutes scrolling through a help forum for a formula name you can't quite remember, you know exactly why this matters.
The limitation the user mentions is real, and it's also an opportunity. No single person can anticipate every edge case or workflow that a community relies on. That's where the collaborative nature of a subreddit becomes valuable. By asking for input, they're turning a personal project into a shared resource. The best references are living documents, updated by the people who actually use them. If the community contributes its own blind spots and favorite shortcuts, this spreadsheet can evolve beyond one person's experience. That's a smarter approach than trying to ship a polished, finished product that immediately becomes outdated.
Here's the concrete takeaway: stop treating a spreadsheet reference like a textbook you read cover to cover. Build one you can query, filter, and scan. Rank the difficulty. Write the explanation in the language you'd use to explain it to a colleague. And don't assume you know everything it needs to contain. Ask the people who will use it. The user here has the right instinct. The only way a reference earns its place in your workflow is if it's faster to open than it is to guess.