Tracker Doctor
A local tool that reads an Excel project tracker (.xlsx) and produces a single-page HTML "doctor's report." Names every decay pattern in the workbook — volatile functions, full-column refs, conditional-format fragmentation, sort-breaking date formulas, column bloat — with the fix for each one. Read-only. Your data never leaves the machine.
Four decay patterns repeat across every long-lived Excel tracker.
OFFSET, INDIRECT, NOW, TODAY recalc on every edit.
One or two are harmless; a dozen scattered through a 50K-row tracker turns every save into a coffee break. The fix is well-known (replace with INDEX, anchor TODAY to one cell, etc.) but no one knows which cells to fix because Excel doesn't surface them.
Copy/paste duplicates rules; deleting rows splits them.
A tracker that opens with 10 rules finishes a year later with 400, status colors no longer matching anything. Excel offers a "Manage Rules" dialog but PMs don't know what to consolidate because there's no overview of the damage.
The classic =D2+10 breaks the moment someone sorts the sheet.
Reference is positional, not anchored to the task. A direct Microsoft Community thread is literally titled "Excel for simple project management — date dependency problems." The fix (WORKDAY() or a table reference) is fine; the audit of which cells need the fix is missing.
Templates ship with 30+ columns. Most stay empty.
Every column is maintenance someone has to do. Bloat makes the tracker feel daunting and people quietly stop updating it. The PM notices the team has stopped using the file and doesn't know why.
These pains share a quality: the tracker still opens; it just gets slower / wronger / less trustworthy. There's no error message, no flashing red. The market response is to ship more templates — Vertex42, Microsoft, Plaky, ProjectManager.com all do this — but the unmet pain is the inverse: tell me what's wrong with the tracker I already have.
One page, seven sections, a verdict at the top.
The output is a single self-contained HTML file written to ./output/. System fonts, no external CSS or JS, prints cleanly, embeds in email.
Health summary + verdict
One-line tier (Healthy / Minor decay / Major decay / Critical) based on aggregate counts. Headline numbers in a single card — volatile cells, full-column refs, CF rules, date-dep formulas, data columns vs lean baseline.
Volatile-function audit
Per worksheet, the count of each volatile function in use, with the non-volatile equivalent recommended (INDEX for OFFSET, direct refs for INDIRECT where finite).
Full-column reference audit
Each A:A-style formula listed by cell. Recommendation: convert to a Table and use structured references.
Conditional-formatting audit
Per-sheet CF rule count with a "rule bloat" flag when count is high relative to columns. Recommendation: consolidate via Manage Rules; anchor source ranges to tables to stop future fragmentation.
Date-dependency audit
Each =Ref+N formula listed by cell. Recommendation: WORKDAY() or table-anchored references that survive sort/filter.
Column bloat audit
Sheet-by-sheet column count, delta vs the 7-column lean baseline, full listing of headers so the PM can sort columns into essential / nice-to-have / stale at a glance.
Workbook weight
File size, sheet count, per-sheet used range. Used-range drift past actual data is a quiet cause of slow saves; this section surfaces it.
Requirements
- OSWindows, macOS, or Linux
- RuntimePowerShell 7+ (
pwsh). Windows PowerShell 5.1 is not supported. - BrowserAnything modern. Configuration UI is on
localhost:8770. - Module
ImportExcel(PowerShell Gallery). First run prompts to install. Same module Excel Rescue uses. - ExcelNot required on the running machine. The tool reads
.xlsxvia ImportExcel; no Office install needed. - NetworkNone. The tool reads a local file and writes a local file. No API, no cloud, no telemetry.
- DataNever leaves your machine. Workbook is opened read-only and closed without saving.
Claude could write this. Two reasons to prefer the script.
Some workplaces — defense, medical devices, finance, anywhere with a strict IT policy — won't let Claude or any AI tool touch production data. These tools run locally with no network calls. And even where AI is allowed, repeat workflows shouldn't cost tokens — a deterministic script runs the same way every time, for free, forever. The prompt guide below shows how this tool was built with Claude; the download is what you run after.
Three files. Free.
The tool itself, a user guide that walks through install → Discover → Generate, and a prompt guide showing how this was built with Claude Code — including the call to not ship yet another tracker template and instead audit the trackers people already have.
Drop your email to unlock the downloads.
One email when new tools ship, digest only. Confirms via Kit (double opt-in). No tracking. Unlocks every download on the site from this browser.
.xlsx with seeded decay so first run produces a working report. Extract anywhere, run ./start.ps1. No installer.