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Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

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Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#11

Post by protomyth »

"All the logic for our process is in these Excel Spreadsheets."

I love Excel, and I hate Excel. I think it is one of the most interesting tools since HyperCard for the non-programmer. I just wish there was a bit more structure. I would love something more like a Lego set.

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#13

Post by TeMPOraL »

xnx wrote: post #10
Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word afte…

> As to Excel: Hopefully it won't take another 35 years for them to fix CSV opening so it doesn't auto-format long numbers into scientific notion or dates, then cause unrecoverable data loss when you save. If you don't know what the data format is DON'T GUESS! Amen! Also removing the leading zeros from US ZIP codes.

Would also say corrupting gene names, but in this case the scientists literally decided to rename genes to not conflict with Excel's treatment of date-like strings.

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#14

Post by hateful »

Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word afte…

My first job in 2000 was converting files from the "PC" so they can be used on the Mainframe - and this was one of our biggest issues. Some things never change. Used to rename csv files to anything but csv to import them so you'd get the wizard.

Hey, but luckily they removed the import option recently! /sarcasm

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#17

Post by ThisIsTheWay »

Heavy use of Excel has literally changed the way I think, and it's what piqued my interest in learning how to program. Using macros was cool, but being able to record and see your actions "transcribed" to visual basic code was pure magic. Excel will always be one of my favorite bits of software.

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#18

Post by markus92 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word afte…

Also stop using locale settings for importing CSVs, or at least make a setting for it. I had to change my PC's locale to English (US) just to decently import CSV files in Excel

Re: Microsoft Excel’s 35th birthday

#20

Post by amichal »

Someone1234 wrote: post #5

Excel remains one of my most used pieces of software, and one where I feel like any education/training has re-paid for itself multiple times over. The more you learn, the more productive you are (and sometimes more informed, thanks to data visualizations). OneNote (desktop) and Excel are the only two pieces of Microsoft Office that I regularly continue to use. They're the only reason I license it. Microsoft Word afte…

i recently got burned because at some point in the last few years Excel decided it would be better if it attempted to use localized thousands and decimal separators.

    item,cost,currency
    "Socks",1.234,USD
Represents socks costing about a dollar in countries that use '.' as a decimal (most) and about a thousand dollars in countries that use a ','. In locales using a decimal period '.' double clicking will open the CSV just fine. In locales using a ',' it comes in as text but the default settings for text to columns use localized number parsing but still let you choose a now ambiguous comma as a column separator. I'm 99% sure it didn't used to do this as we've been making CSVs for the same clients in the same regions (Netherlands) for years and only more recently have they had this trouble.

Edit: I've used Excel for at least 20yrs. I thought i new how to use it and how to search it's docs. This is the only article I've found online that mentions how to handle this as a end user. Near the bottom under "Converting International Number Formats" where it of course assumes you have decimal comma and need a decimal period.

https://www.howtogeek.com/407217/how-to-use-text-to-columns-...

I did also find a 20 minute youtube eventually

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