How much does it cost to get an advertisement like this in the WSJ?
I work for one of the companies mentioned, and we don't / did not pay for the name drop. Maybe one of the others did, but we did not.
Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
111–120 of 435 posts
Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#112What should we use, then? I desperately need some tool I can tell non-tech people to use where they can input arbitrary structured data. After the data is there, in any format the user wants, as long as it is structured somehow, millions of programs can be written to use that data and combine it, but somehow the data has to be written FIRST. It is not feasible to come up with the schema, write a software based on tha…
Teach people how to use excel properly: - treat inputs and outputs separately - always use simple tables for input (no breaks, first lines are titles, basic vlookups for relationships, etc.) - use pivot tables to summarize the tables, and build reports on top of the pivot tables. EDIT: BTW, on a personal level, I've moved to CSV/Jupyter Notebooks combo, but I have no hope that my fellow non-tech workers will do the s…
My current role is at a large company, and a significant portion of my work is getting Excel reports which are broken and fixing them. Most I've never seen working. Some reports have been broken for years but need to be resurrected.
To add a couple more:
- Use actual tables. (Select data+headers, Insert -> Tables -> Table). In most cases the data is tabular but not formatted as a table. Making this one change makes the formulas self-documenting, and rather than selecting rows 2:5000, it will automatically accommodate more data as it's added. Tables can also be named (click in the table, Table Tools [Design] -> Properties -> Table Name). E.g. tbl_sales. This allows nice formulas like
=SUM(tbl_sales[Sales])
=SUMIF(tbl_sales[Region],"West",tbl_sales[Sales])
- Add a sheet with instructions. Explain hiccups which may be encountered, and how to fix them.
- Add comments to VBA. There is about 1 person at my facility (other than me) who adds any comments at all. Most use the Macro Recorder then add in the loops and logic as needed. Makes it really tough to figure out.
- Protect cells which hold calculations. I recently saw a spreadsheet which has been giving sub-optimal output for years because the ranges used in a function were messed up and copied down every week.
- Use the built-in styles (Home -> Styles). Same goes for Word (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.). It makes spreadsheets way more straightforward to read if there are some cells using Explanatory, Input, and Note styles, and it's less abrasive to read. I particularly like the Input style because you can tell users "You'll only need to update the orange cells".
- Use multi-line formulas. Alt+Enter while editing a cell allows multiple lines on a single formula. You can also improve the readability by adding four spaces at the start of the new lines. E.g.
=SUMIFS(tbl_sales[Total_Sales],
tbl_sales[Month], "Jan",
tbl_sales[Region], "West")Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#113I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…
I used to be a Lotus Notes specialist, and one interesting thing I noticed is that from the earliest versions it was designed specifically to be a "step up" from a spreadsheet (Lotus of course also made Lotus 1-2-3, which was the original killer-app spreadsheet before Excel took over). Notes still let you see data as rows and columns and had very spreadsheet-like functions, many of which could be transferred directly…
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Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#114This is just an ad for the cloud services they mentioned. Suits whining about not having absolute control over every scrap of information is not news.
Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#115I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…
Completely agree. I think simply enforcing a version control would be sufficient to solve most Excel woes, however. It doesn't solve manual user error (a la Reinhart-Rogoff), but it's a good next step.
Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#116While we're talking about Excel: Are there any good tools available for version control and/or diffing of spreadsheets? If my coworker updates a formula in cell E3 and emails it to be, is there any way for me to know what changed?
Spreadsheet Compare is built into Excel/Office. It's a relatively unknown tool since it came out in 2013.
See: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Basic-tasks-in-Spre...
Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#117This article could have been written 20 years ago, and it probably was in some other form.
Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#118I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…
When I consulted at a health insurance company (a Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee with 1000 employees, 200 IT staff) about 10 years ago, I was absolutely horrified that the system of record for health care plan data was Excel spreadsheets. They had staff who would update the claims processing system based on thousands of spreadsheets. When you called customer service, the CSR app would auto-open the member's plan inf…
They should be careful though: excel allows a maximum of 1,000,000 rows. I have seen more than one major crisis occur when a spreadsheet ran out of space, yet all of it was needed together to do daily business.
Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#119I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…
Functional programming before it was fashionable!
This is how I like to explain functional programming to developers today. When you say "Functional Programming", a lot of devs think "scary complicated thing". When you say "Basic excel spreadsheets" they go "anyone can do that!".
Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been working on a spreadsheet which is more amenable to embedding in programs (compiling to an IR which can be translated to high level languages or [eventually] compiler IRs like those of LLVM or GCC). I worked at a company where months were spent recreating models from a spreadsheet produced by subject matter experts, and this was a major cost. A spreadsheet optimized for integration into software build proces…
This idea looks super interesting. Is the source already online, or will be?