Structure Flattener

Turns a report you were sent into a table you can use: merged headers unmerged, subtotal rows removed, and every section name carried onto the rows it belonged to.

Support

Email support@appgarden.co.uk. Include the Excel platform you are on (Windows, Mac or the web) and what the pane showed before you flattened. If the shape it reported was wrong, the workbook itself is the most useful thing you can send — but only send one you are content to share, and see the privacy notice first.

Replies are best-effort, usually within a few working days. There is no phone line.

Using it

Open the report, then Home › Flatten sheet. The pane reads the active sheet and tells you the shape it found before it changes anything — how many header rows, how many sections, how many rows go in and how many come out.

• It reads the layout, not just the cells. Titles, merged and multi-row headers, section groupings, subtotal rows, spacers and "prepared by" footers are identified as structure rather than as data with problems.
• Nothing is thrown away. Every removed subtotal becomes a value in a Section column, so the information moves rather than disappearing. Titles and footer text are kept in the summary.
• You get a veto on the two judgement calls. Column names joined from a multi-row header, and section names inferred from the report, are shown for editing before anything is written. The rest is mechanical.

The original sheet is never changed

The flattened table is written to a new sheet called <source> (flat). Undo is deleting that sheet. There is no mode, setting or edge case in which this add-in writes to the sheet it read.

The summary shows the source's grand total against the sum of the flattened rows. If those two disagree, the flatten is wrong and the pane says so at the top rather than burying it — that check is the reason to trust the table underneath.

Free and paid

Detection and the preview are free and unlimited: you can see exactly what it would do to your own file, every time, without paying. Free flattens up to 100 rows.

Pro removes the row cap and adds multi-sheet batch flattening and saved section-name overrides per report shape. Prices and checkout.

Paddle is the merchant of record and takes the payment. The terms of service, the refund policy — a full refund within 30 days of any payment — and the privacy notice set out the rest.

Your licence key

Keys are shown on screen at the end of checkout, not emailed. Keep the page, or paste the key straight into the pane under Licence. Lost it? Email support with the address you paid on.

Entering the key stores an entitlement on that machine. If Office clears its storage — which it does on the web, and Safari does on its own — re-entering the same key does not cost you a seat.

Known limits

• One report block at a time. Two separate tables stacked on one sheet are detected and reported, but only one is flattened. Cross-tab to long ("unpivot") reshaping and merging several sheets into one table are not in this version.
• Nesting is carried two levels deep — Section and Subsection. Deeper nesting is reported as unsupported rather than guessed at.
• A subtotal row with no formula, no bold and no "total" in its label is identified by arithmetic alone, and only when every numeric column matches the rows above it. That is deliberately strict: wrongly deleting a real data row is worse than leaving a subtotal in.
• A report with no grand total gives the summary nothing to reconcile against. The pane says so plainly instead of implying a check happened.
• Excel on Mac and on iPad are untested. The manifest permits them, so Microsoft lists them, but no verification run has happened on either. Please report anything odd.

Your data

Nothing in your workbook leaves your machine. The add-in talks to one server, and only about your licence key. Details in the privacy notice.