Show HN: Instantly Understand Any Spreadsheet • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Instantly Understand Any Spreadsheet

#41

Post by lmkg » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 5:55 PM UTC

sheetjs wrote: post #38

roel_v wrote: post #17

OK here is my feedback. First some superficial stuff: Installshield is not going to fly with the market you want to make real money off, i.e. big organisations who want to deploy through Active Directory. The Office addin installer can be put as a merge module into an MSI, that will make the overall install experience much slicker. The instructions on the web page that opens after installation say to look in tab 'Add…

> if(iserror(formula), 0, formula) The IFERROR function was designed for this pattern: IFERROR(formula, 0)

IFERROR was introduced in Excel 2007, and is not compatible with the old-school .xls files. I haven't had to worry about 2003 in the wild in a few years, but some tools may not have migrated to the new file format.

Re: Show HN: Instantly Understand Any Spreadsheet

#42

Post by sheetjs » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 6:08 PM UTC

lmkg wrote: post #41

sheetjs wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if(iserror(formula), 0, formula) The IFERROR function was designed for this pattern: IFERROR(formula, 0)

IFERROR was introduced in Excel 2007, and is not compatible with the old-school .xls files. I haven't had to worry about 2003 in the wild in a few years, but some tools may not have migrated to the new file format.

> is not compatible with the old-school .xls files

You can save as XLS (97-2003) files and Excel serializes the formula using the name `_xlfn.IFERROR`. The file obviously doesn't work in older versions of Excel but will work in 2007+

The mapping for new function names is defined in section 2.2.3 of [MS-XLSX] https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xls/blob/master/bits/69_formta...

Re: Show HN: Instantly Understand Any Spreadsheet

#43

Post by laeus » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 7:10 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #17

OK here is my feedback. First some superficial stuff: Installshield is not going to fly with the market you want to make real money off, i.e. big organisations who want to deploy through Active Directory. The Office addin installer can be put as a merge module into an MSI, that will make the overall install experience much slicker. The instructions on the web page that opens after installation say to look in tab 'Add…

Great feedback, marred by a pointless "Iron Man reference was juvenile" comment. I for one found the example spreadsheet entertaining, and it made the product more appealing to me as a result.

Re: Show HN: Instantly Understand Any Spreadsheet

#44

Post by roel_v » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

sheetjs wrote: post #38

roel_v wrote: post #17

OK here is my feedback. First some superficial stuff: Installshield is not going to fly with the market you want to make real money off, i.e. big organisations who want to deploy through Active Directory. The Office addin installer can be put as a merge module into an MSI, that will make the overall install experience much slicker. The instructions on the web page that opens after installation say to look in tab 'Add…

> if(iserror(formula), 0, formula) The IFERROR function was designed for this pattern: IFERROR(formula, 0)

Oh that's very convenient, thanks. As another person replying said, I only migrated from 2003 a few months ago (don't ask) so I still have a lot of new quality of life features to discover :)

Re: Show HN: Instantly Understand Any Spreadsheet

#45

Post by roel_v » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 9:41 PM UTC

laeus wrote: post #43

roel_v wrote: post #17

OK here is my feedback. First some superficial stuff: Installshield is not going to fly with the market you want to make real money off, i.e. big organisations who want to deploy through Active Directory. The Office addin installer can be put as a merge module into an MSI, that will make the overall install experience much slicker. The instructions on the web page that opens after installation say to look in tab 'Add…

Great feedback, marred by a pointless "Iron Man reference was juvenile" comment. I for one found the example spreadsheet entertaining, and it made the product more appealing to me as a result.

Well as someone in their target group (or maybe not, as someone above remarked, I don't know) I did find it juvenile. What's wrong with saying that? Or do I need to carefully construct everything I say with 'this is just my opinion' etc - this is just an off the cuff report from a first time user to help these guys out, I don't think it's reasonable to expect I'm going to be all touchy feely.

Re: Show HN: Instantly Understand Any Spreadsheet

#46

Post by roel_v » Tue, Aug 05, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

christudor wrote: post #39

roel_v wrote: post #17

OK here is my feedback. First some superficial stuff: Installshield is not going to fly with the market you want to make real money off, i.e. big organisations who want to deploy through Active Directory. The Office addin installer can be put as a merge module into an MSI, that will make the overall install experience much slicker. The instructions on the web page that opens after installation say to look in tab 'Add…

"So I think I'm exactly your target customer." From what you've said, I would argue that you're /not/ their target customer. I used to work with medium- to high-complexity Excel spreadsheets on an almost daily basis, and while understanding someone else's spreadsheet can be tricky in the first 3-6 months, after a while you just get used to working out where data is coming from, usually with the help of F2 (which high…

Yeah maybe you're right, I just thought that from their price point they weren't targeting Nancy down the street who needs to decipher the spreadsheet with the proceeds of the bake sale. I'd consider myself 'entry-level power user', which I then by elimination thought of as the target market.