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Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

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Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#41

Post by aneesh »

asimjalis wrote: post #15

Here are some features that would be nice in Excel: 1. Programmability in something other than VBA (Python?). 2. Online spreadsheets like Google. 3. Better search and replace. 4. Ability to reference tables through URLs so they could show up in blogs and in HTML. Something like this: http://ycspreadsheets.com/joe/doc1.ss?s=1&block=a1:c10. This should produce HTML that some javascript can replace in my blog with the t…

2. The next version of Excel will be online. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_14)

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#42

Post by anamax »

Instead of "new, more powerful spreadsheet", how about providing spreadsheet interface for a relational database?

Of course, if you want it to be successful, you need to be able to import Excel spreadsheets as is, including macros and formula, and you also may need to maintain the linking to/from other microsoft artifacts.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#44

Post by [deleted] »

timmorgan wrote: post #13
aneesh wrote: post #3

Excel is actually a reasonably complete program. That said, I would like to be able to: 1. Build predictive models from data I've entered in Excel. I find myself exporting from Excel into R a lot to satisfy this need. Microsoft partially addresses this need with the Data Mining Add-ons for Excel. 2. Have more than ~1 million rows (which is Excel 2007's limit). 3. More easily clean up data in a large spreadsheet. 4. R…

1 million rows??? Who wants to scroll through that mess?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#46

Post by neilc »

newt0311 wrote: post #37
aneesh wrote: post #3

Excel is actually a reasonably complete program. That said, I would like to be able to: 1. Build predictive models from data I've entered in Excel. I find myself exporting from Excel into R a lot to satisfy this need. Microsoft partially addresses this need with the Data Mining Add-ons for Excel. 2. Have more than ~1 million rows (which is Excel 2007's limit). 3. More easily clean up data in a large spreadsheet. 4. R…

"more than ~1 million rows." Grow up and use an actual database.

Excel (or some form of programmable spreadsheet) is much more convenient for a lot of data analysis tasks.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#47

Post by CatDancer »

ctkrohn wrote: post #40
CatDancer wrote: post #31

Oh my goodness, you're going to get my spreadsheet rant. This is what frustrates me every single time I use Excel (or the Google Docs spreadsheet, for that matter). I may not be answering your question since I'm talking about usability instead of more powerful features, but I can't but imagine that there'd be a market for simple and easy to use, even if it turns out it's not going to be addressed by your particular s…

Excel allows you to do named ranges. Select a range, then type its name in the address box. Then, in another cell, you can type =sum(myrange).

Doesn't help. The point is Excel doesn't know what range I want when I extend my table, not whether I can give the range a name or not.

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#48

Post by gruseom »

joe_the_user wrote: post #35
asimjalis wrote: post #15

Here are some features that would be nice in Excel: 1. Programmability in something other than VBA (Python?). 2. Online spreadsheets like Google. 3. Better search and replace. 4. Ability to reference tables through URLs so they could show up in blogs and in HTML. Something like this: http://ycspreadsheets.com/joe/doc1.ss?s=1&block=a1:c10. This should produce HTML that some javascript can replace in my blog with the t…

"Ability to pull and reference data dynamically from online sources. For example, imagine a spreadsheet cell that pulled the current stock price of GOOG every time it was viewed. And the rest of the spreadsheet would naturally update automatically." Yes. This feature implemented well would create a really cool app. What would be even more interesting would a situation where several different sheets could pull data fr…

Could the "clever protocol" simply be: refresh the numbers when the user refreshes a page?

Re: Ask HN: What can't you do in Excel?

#49

Post by quantumhobbit »

CatDancer wrote: post #31

Oh my goodness, you're going to get my spreadsheet rant. This is what frustrates me every single time I use Excel (or the Google Docs spreadsheet, for that matter). I may not be answering your question since I'm talking about usability instead of more powerful features, but I can't but imagine that there'd be a market for simple and easy to use, even if it turns out it's not going to be addressed by your particular s…

Apple Numbers allows you to simple say =Sum(C) to sum up an entire row.
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