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Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#21

Post by mcbishop »

quacked wrote: post #11
brudgers wrote: post #8

Turning it into a polished app requires a significant time investment still. Excel is the standard for a "polished" spreadsheet. It has been in development for about 40 years (since it was released in 1985) and has had the resources the most valuable company in the world can put into a flagship cash cow application. It's-not-Excel is the primary pain point for all spreadsheet applications. Documentation, training, th…

You nailed it. The only thing Excel doesn't have is the well-designed UI and collaborative functionality of Google Sheets. Named tables, VBA, Power Query? I'm never leaving.

It has the collaborative functionality in Excel Online and in OneDrive-hosted Office-365-subscription desktop Excel.

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#22

Post by alok-g »

Spreadsheets I create often have some 'global' variables, some sheet-specific ones, and many column-level formulas. It would be great to see first-class support for these. In Excel, need to copy over formulas to all cells in a column, albeit there's a short cut for that. Global abd sheet-level variables need to be put on the sides of columnar data or in separate sheets.

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#23

Post by zzo38computer »

I would want a "zoned spreadsheet", where you can define a zone grid on each page; each row and column of the zone grid defines the number of rows and columns of data in that zone row/column as well as names for rows and columns, and each cell of the zone grid (which is named by the combination of the row zone name and column zone name) has properties such as formatting, protection, default values, etc. Formulas can go in zone cells and in data cells (although if a zone cell contains a formula, then the data cells in that zone will have the data automatically filled in and you cannot change it without removing the formula from the zone).

Another thing I wanted is to be able to write extensions in C, and to work with non-Unicode text.

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#24

Post by ithkuil »

zzo38computer wrote: post #23

I would want a "zoned spreadsheet", where you can define a zone grid on each page; each row and column of the zone grid defines the number of rows and columns of data in that zone row/column as well as names for rows and columns, and each cell of the zone grid (which is named by the combination of the row zone name and column zone name) has properties such as formatting, protection, default values, etc. Formulas can…

Excel "tables" feature is almost what you describe as zones.

W.r.t non-unicode text: what's your use case?

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#25

Post by blitzar »

x0x0 wrote: post #13
brudgers wrote: post #8

Turning it into a polished app requires a significant time investment still. Excel is the standard for a "polished" spreadsheet. It has been in development for about 40 years (since it was released in 1985) and has had the resources the most valuable company in the world can put into a flagship cash cow application. It's-not-Excel is the primary pain point for all spreadsheet applications. Documentation, training, th…

Also the price of Excel rounds to zero when added to a professional salary for essentially any profession.

If I add up all the costs required that "effectively round to zero" the remainder from a normal salary rounds to zero.

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#26

Post by x0x0 »

blitzar wrote: post #25
x0x0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the price of Excel rounds to zero when added to a professional salary for essentially any profession.

If I add up all the costs required that "effectively round to zero" the remainder from a normal salary rounds to zero.

Nonsense, or surely you'll be able to list these costs that add up to, let's say, over 50% of a salary or $30k plus.

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#27

Post by oulipo »

zzo38computer wrote: post #23

I would want a "zoned spreadsheet", where you can define a zone grid on each page; each row and column of the zone grid defines the number of rows and columns of data in that zone row/column as well as names for rows and columns, and each cell of the zone grid (which is named by the combination of the row zone name and column zone name) has properties such as formatting, protection, default values, etc. Formulas can…

extensions in WASM might probably be easier for portability

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

x0x0 wrote: post #26
blitzar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I add up all the costs required that "effectively round to zero" the remainder from a normal salary rounds to zero.

Nonsense, or surely you'll be able to list these costs that add up to, let's say, over 50% of a salary or $30k plus.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#29

Post by pillefitz »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #12

We recently build spreadsheet support in our app. Our pain-points are almost entierly mundane: * Macro-enabled Excel files, that can only be run on or by Windows. * A endless log of Excel files that have errors. Most of these are files that are not compliant to the spec, but have been supported by various software over the years. * User creating formats and overly complicated/brittle spreadsheet.

A VBA interpreter in WASM would be great!

Re: Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

#30

Post by RajBhai »

When exporting an Excel doc, for example to CSV, the app makes the new file (CSV) the active document.

This has serious consequences if I continue to make changes in the new doc when I think I'm still in the native doc (xlsx).

I find myself exporting to CSV, and then closing this CSV file, and finally reopening the original Excel doc.

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