cm0002
lnxtx (xe/xem/xyr)“Excel” 365 🤮
DarkCloudThe Libre Office Suite is better, and Free Open Source Software (FOSS).
sihaLibreoffice calc is pretty hurrendous tbh
Yeah, I prefer Grist
It’s ok if you use it for simple things. Simple arithmetic
It’s been a while since I’ve used it, how good is it compared to office and Google sheets now?
Similar but with an interface that refuses to do anything new for 20 years.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad
The only two innovations in spreadsheets in 20 years that I’ve liked are connecting them to databases directly (which still sucks) and being able to collaboratively edit them.
Some of it is just familiarity but I found Google sheets to be a breath of fresh air and still find Excel just painful.
Although Google has really gotten pretty cluttered lately as they add features and slap them in whatever menu they pick at random.
100%.
what the hell is going on with “Tables” vs filter views vs slices vs named ranges.
That should all be one properly thought out feature. And tables are so fragile. Nobody knows how to use filters because they default to global. The row groupings feature is entirely broken and forgotten about…
The little pills you get for validated entries are nice though, but even that has like 3 different versions and ways to do it.
Then there’s things like checkboxes, I know there’s an option for it somewhere, but I have never once found the menu it lives in.
Oh and the paste style menu item that tells you the shortcut but doesn’t copy stole for you. That is the most written by an engineer feature I’ve ever seen. “You’re doing it wrong, do it my way now or don’t do it all”.
I love filter views, no real complaints there except that other people can’t manage to figure out the difference between filtering the whole sheet and setting up a filter view.
Tables seem kind of pointless but better than a separate spreadsheet app I guess?
Not sure about “little pills”, do you mean the drop downs? That’s in validation, and it’s a little odd but better both in interface and function than Excel. There’s really only one version and two ways to do it: “data validation” and “insert drop-down” (the latter is just a shortcut to the former, but with relevant options selected). Checkboxes are the same (both live in the insert menu).
I’ve never known the “paste style” menu, I mostly use keyboard shortcuts when pasting. I might be misunderstanding what you’re describing there.
Create a table in Libre Office, I’ll wait…
Everything is a table if you’re brave enough.
Wait excel sheets are pretty much already tables right…
spamspeicherNo PowerQuery? No thank you.
I’d agree with that.
What if I like it? Is there something wrong with me?
RhaedasNot at all. You just haven't gotten deep enough into the beast to see the horror.
But what about those of us in R1C1 mode using lambdas to do recursive cell operations across data pulled from multiple sheets? Am I anywhere near the kinda of Eldritch horrors discussed? I’ve also written indirect references based on Sheet name to populate filters from web scraped tables. I just don’t know how deep the pit goes at this point.
I will give it to you, when it works, it does some magical stuff. But try designing such complex things that are miracles in coding and then it have to run on a half-ass computer. I want to say terminal, it's not that, but it's those small fake computers that companies seem to think are better to get than an actual desktop because they're cheap. I know that's hardware, not Excel, but Excel does not run well on that, so...
Or worse, you get moved to 365 which doesn't do most scripting and breaks all that was working. That cloud shit is a problem.
Oh yeah, the 365 version is terrible. And post of the time, it could have been a Python Gradio interface or similar simple implementation without having to fight so much to make basic things work. Most of what I want Excel to do it just isn’t efficient enough for; particularly with lets and lambdas, it’s gotten quite powerful as a programming paradigm where you can visualize and manipulate your data spatially in a kind of Logo / NetLogo style way which is really interesting, but the second you reference a few thousand cells a few times even a solid CPU starts screaming.
I use Excel for a decent number of tasks and can do some magic with it, but only ever really for work where it’s easier to share a weird Excel sheet than it is to pass around a Python script (which given I teach Python and C, isn’t actually as often as most people experience).
[deleted] in lemmyYou are probably using it for its intended purpose, which it Excels at.
arotriosYou will understand in time, young padawan…
I think it’s one of my all time favorites. I think people here live in the tech literate bubble who know how to use specialized software for the different things excel does, albeit clunkily. But average people are intimidated by those more advanced tools, and there are a lot of average people in decision making positions who benefit greatly from being able to use excel.
ooh thats me and databases.
Databases are just Excel with extra steps
Databases are excel in four dimensions.
MelodiousFunkExcel is the database. Excel is the status console. Excel is the web scraper. Excel is the data analyzer.
All hail the mighty Spreadsheet, let us VBA. 🙏
NHS COVID DATA entered the chat
It depends on how long you use it:
Year 1: Ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?
Year 2: How is it still fucking breaking?
Year 3: I just don’t fucking care if keeps breaking. I think I hate this program.
Year 4: I hate this program
Year 5: Let the hate flow through you, consume you. Feel the dark side flowing through your fingertips. Yes. Good. Why is it breaking? It’s the end users. Yes… they’ve been plotting against you from the beginning - hiding columns, erasing formulas and even…
merging cells
Que heavy breathing through a respirator.
Year 6: It’s a board meeting. They ask you if you can average all the moving averages of average sales per month and provide an exponential trendline to forecast growth on five million rows of data.
You say “sure, boss, I can knock that for you in Excel in about an hour or two.”
Your team leader interjects “I believe what he was trying to say was we’ll use Tableau and it will take about a month.”
You turn to him with a steely glare.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
Year 7: Your team leader is gone after you pointed out he fucked up one of your sheets that run the business by merging a cell. All data flows through you and the holy spreadsheet, and the board is terrified of firing you because no one knows how your sheets work but you and their entire inventory system would collapse if you leave.
But then the inevitable happens. Dissension in the ranks. The juniors talk of python, R, Tableau, Power BI - anything to release your dark hold upon the holy data. You could crush them all with a xlookup chain faster than they can type a SELECT statement. The Rebellion is coming, but you’re ready. You’ve discovered the Data Model, capable of building a relational database behind the hidden moons of Power Pivot, parsing tens of millions of rows - and your Death Star is almost complete.
You’re ready to unleash your dark fury when the fucking spreadsheet breaks again.
Year 8: New company. They ask if you know Excel. You just start cackling with a addictive gleam in your eye as tears start streaming down your face.
They hire you on the spot.
All they use is Excel. And Access.
You think, ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?
This is art
We need a /c/MuseumOfLemmy to preserve this treasure in so that it may be cherished and studied by our children and our children’s children and many generations beyond.
MelonYellowThe ending was great. Nice payoff.
Year 7: Your team leader is gone after you pointed out he fucked up one of your sheets that run the business by merging a cell.
I am laughing about how after 7 years nobody has locked the sheets that run the business to avoid this specific thing.
Or maybe they were kocked and the team leader unlocked it so they could break it without saving a backup.
Why isn’t that “Merge Cells” button hidden behind 3 levels of menus up to this day?
There’s no way they’re using xlookup at year 7. You can pry my index match from my cold dead hands.
cackles manically in DAX
Xlookup works fine for like 90% of cases, I save index match mainly for when I need to return multiple lookup values. In which case I load into BI because I always forget how index match works 😫
I should probably learn how BI works, but I’m mostly torturing excel to do things it was never intended to do.
Yeah if its something ad hoc I’ll paste values but for sheets meant to be maintained I’ll do it in PQ through merges or calculated columns. Lookups get the job done but they are expensive ;)
!LemmySilver
this is art
Damn you just described my role but everything happened within a span of 3 years
I guess I’m just about at the end. How the fuck do I use access?
HupfDamn as somebody with very little coding or IT background whatsoever but had to learn excel on my last 5 year of work, I understood it all.
Especially the cell merging… Spawn of the devil itself…
OwlThis comment should be UNESCO world heritage
Just started a new job two weeks ago, all they use is Excel and Access. Now you’ve got me scared, first job out of uni and feels like a lot of pressure.
Welcome to the dark side, young padawan…
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 “It’s not as good as making games in as Unity or Unreal but I can manage.”
The Ramen DutchmanOur future is that one day our heads will be attached to VR headsets and our brains uploaded and parsed in 1.9 TiB of MS Excel.
I’ve done things in excel that are an abomination in the eyes of the divine.
I have absolutely 0 regret.
You have January 1, 1970 regret?
Or false regret, either or.
Generate localization strings in all requested languages with the “translate” macro without proof checking because you don’t speak Finnish or Japanese?
Worse - pulling data from a web page, then using the power of pure jank to parse this input, and then invoking a sheet of reference string builders to construct formulae and execute them using too damn many @indirects nested into vlookups before finally adding in date aware data reveals, because no excel abomination is complete without trying to parse dates.
Shit man, I’m sure there’s an xkcd for that.
Either that or medication!