Excel would be fine if people didn't keep creating spreadsheets with it.
it’s even worse when they use it as a database...
The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
71–80 of 435 posts
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#72People say "use a real database", fine, but where is the visual data entry? Where are the easy adhoc reports? Where are the forms? I guess if you're on Windows you can use Microsoft Access, but that's the only accesible tool I know of that doesn't require a team of programmers or an enterprise license for some Oracle/SAP type monstrosity.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#73I'm "the excel guy" for a lab of about 100 people, and it is indeed a challenge sometimes. Mostly I just yell at them and tell them to stop using excel sheets as makeshift databases. Then I yell at them some more and make them switch from formulas (which, being written in reverse Polish, are terrible to debug) over to macros. Then I yell at them for recording macros instead of writing them themselves. Then I just do…
Have you considered trying to get people to use something like Jupyter or R Notebook?
Number One reason to use Jupyter, R Notebooks or anything else:
Source Control. They can write bad code all they want, if you can put it in source control you point out what they broke. Try doing that with an excel file where they are cutting and pasting formulas.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a career educator, and ruling out learning disabilities that are not appropriately accommodated, I believe that generally means you're not doing a good job of explaining in a way the other person is capable of grasping. Blame goes both ways. And the original point still stands. It is productive to teach someone to improve their own processes.
One difference between your experiences as an educator and the parent's experiences as an Office Excel Guy is that educators have a position of authority, and there is generally an ethos of paying attention and trying to remember what they're telling you!
^ This. Office Excel Guy is just glorified IT help desk. People don't want an explanation, don't want to learn how to use excel necessarily. They want want to push one button, and get a result. Spend longer than 5 minutes explaining it and you will be told you're wasting their time.
You spend time explaining on what is essentially deaf ears, and being on call all the time
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Past a low complexity bar, I feel like R is a much easier answer than Excel. Excel can get pretty hairy pretty fast. As you mention below, debugging even terrible R code is easier than debugging Excel.
Really? I took a stab at R about a year ago and found it utterly confusing.
As a non-programmer (my job is in business intelligence so the most “programming” I do is in sql) I found R really easy to understand and use. Within hours of starting with it I was already doing part of my job in it, especially thanks to Tidyverse libraries.
I did once try to learn Java, which I did found incredibly confusing and impossible to do anything useful with.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Explaining it to the same person for the 15th time though...
As a career educator, and ruling out learning disabilities that are not appropriately accommodated, I believe that generally means you're not doing a good job of explaining in a way the other person is capable of grasping. Blame goes both ways. And the original point still stands. It is productive to teach someone to improve their own processes.
This is a reasonable approach for someone whose primary role is educating others.
It rapidly recedes from the realm of reasonable considerations once we're talking about someone providing informal Excel support to colleagues as an extracurricular activity.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#77I'm "the excel guy" for a lab of about 100 people, and it is indeed a challenge sometimes. Mostly I just yell at them and tell them to stop using excel sheets as makeshift databases. Then I yell at them some more and make them switch from formulas (which, being written in reverse Polish, are terrible to debug) over to macros. Then I yell at them for recording macros instead of writing them themselves. Then I just do…
My most dreaded words with Excel are: > Can you help me with VLOOKUP? Followed shortly by: > I'm having trouble with a Pivot chart.
I don't get people who have trouble with Pivot tables.
Literally drag and drop things until you get what you need.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#78Everyone should be using airtable now
I agree it's incredible! Everyone owes it to themselves to try it for 5 min if not yet familiar. Its as easy and intuitive as excel (if not more) and has many of the benefits of a database plus a great interface, document attachments, integrated maps, etc.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's less "not wanting to help people" and more "once people know you're 'the Excel person' they come to you for everything to do with Excel". It's very similar to being 'the computer person' in a family/group of friends and everyone coming to you with all their various tech support questions. At a certain point, it starts ruining your productivity since you get taken out of your regular job to do these one time help…
There is a difference between "doing other people's job" and "enabling them to learn on their own" in my experience. Explaining to someone why it is better to use INDEX MATCH in lieu of VLOOKUP will never ruin my productivity.
In my experience not 1 person in 50 of people who "aren't computer people" will retain that information regardless of how much time you spend. I once worked with a guy who would come to me for everything from excel stuff to "help I can't find this email in my gmail account". I tried to stress to him that I had my own work to do (write code) but he whined that it would take me just a minute and it might take him 15 or more! This had been going on at least 5 times a day for months and so finally I angrily asked him what I couldn't do faster than him out of his tasks and why shouldn't I just do his job and get his paycheck too. The requests slowed down after that. Being the one technical person available is almost always a shit experience.
Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my experience working in offices like law firms that are filled with people that have limited technical aptitude for using software. Showing any sort of competency is a recipe for increasing your workload with no conferred benefits.
That's fine, the problem is that you also get all the blame as well. Once you "fix" a computer, everything that will break will suddenly be your fault.
Very true. I once installed a printer driver in a friend's company. I got blamed for missing files by several employees during the following weeks.