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The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

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Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#171

Post by merb »

guelo wrote: post #72

People 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.

basically you can use excel to query postgresql. either with Power Query and NPGSQL or for the more non developer experience you can buy an addin: https://www.devart.com/excel-addins/postgresql.html

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#172

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

wyoung2 wrote: post #110
pge wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s even worse when they use it as a database...

What's the alternative? Microsoft leaves Access out of many of its Office license plans, so it's an extra cost add-on to most people, hence uninteresting. Filemaker is very nice, but even more costly in most cases. I've never used Base in LibreOffice, but I also don't see people sharing their Base files, from which I infer that it isn't very popular. (Could be my myopia, though.) Even if LibreOffice Base is gaining u…

Easy peasy. Everybody should just use SQL Server Express via VBA and ODBC to store and retrieve data for their spreadsheets.

More seriously, It would be nice if MS added a better way to manage data tables outside of sheets in Excel. They have the underlying technologies to do it. It just needs a low friction UI.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#173

Post by 3rdAccount »

jiveturkey wrote: post #82
css wrote: post #5

I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. Enabling people to learn more about the software they use every day is better for everyone involved. Yes, some problems are too complex to solve in a few minutes, but pointing someone in the right direction requires little to no effort. Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software…

> I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. You, sir, have not been the victim of help vampires. > A lot of people struggle to find answers specifically because of this lack of community around using Excel as a tool I am unaware of this lack of information. Perhaps I am not doing the really, really, really exotic stuff but every question I have ever had on Excel has been answerable via Goog…

Agreed. Most Excel stuff is extremely well documented on Stack Overflow, numerous blog sites, and message boards. I wrote a fair amount of VBA today(something I've only done a few times before) and found it to be quite straightforward.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#174

Post by astura »

Loughla wrote: post #19
wernercd wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

You can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn. Most people in this situation don't want to learn and actively tune you out. They just want you to fix their problem and if they have another problem (or the same problem again), they'll just call you over to fix it again.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#175

Post by jbhatab »

octo6 wrote: post #63

Shameless plug - we actually founded a service [1] that provides Excel experts on-demand, within 30 to 60 seconds. So if you're tired of being the "Excel expert" at work feel free to pass them on to us. Also happy to answer any questions. Tidbit: Most popular questions tend to be formulas, vlookups, conditional formatting, pivots. [1] https://www.excelchat.co

awesome!!!!! Can't wait to use this.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#176

Post by 3rdAccount »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #41
rhodysurf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely value in teaching others, but first they have to want to learn. I work with a lot of mechanical engineers and I am the only real "software guy" in our office. Most of the time they don't want to learn how to do computer things themselves because (mostly the older engineers) consider it to not be their job or out of their scope.

At my previous job in the power industry we had to clean up our shared drive and move all the CAD files of one type into a certain new folder, and the CAD files of the newer type into another, and PDF outputs in another, GIS exports in another, etc. Three people were dragging-and-dropping by hand for hours until I had some free time and made a Python script in 10 minutes to do this all. Got a few free drinks that day…

It's amazing what scripting allows one to do. If I was in charge of hiring any technical roles, any non-developer job would still require basic coding proficiency, or at least a candidate who agreed to seriously give it a shot and try to learn.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#177

Post by froindt »

cm2187 wrote: post #64
PascLeRasc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There needs to be an Excel "pro mode" where the mouse is disabled and you have to do all navigation by keyboard. People would become so much more efficient that way.

And where hitting F1 doesn't launch some useless help app.

I physically removed the F1 key from my keyboard. Particularly useful since I use F2 to edit cells.

I mess up a lot when I help other people on their computers though.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#178

Post by clairity »

the best i've seen is a woman who did corporate financial planning and analysis. i could ask a question and she would have a pivot table spit out the answer as i finished the question.

i consider myself a good* (but not great) excel user, but she was amazing!

* having done complex financial modeling incorporating monte carlo simulation for predictive what-if analysis

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#179

Post by css »

intended wrote: post #123
css wrote: post #5

I do not understand the mindset of not wanting to help other people. Enabling people to learn more about the software they use every day is better for everyone involved. Yes, some problems are too complex to solve in a few minutes, but pointing someone in the right direction requires little to no effort. Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software…

>Excel lacks the community programmers have and also lacks the learning opportunities given by open-source software. Source needed. There’s crap tons of excel help, and the amount of excel queries+answers will easily put other languages to shame. The difference is that excel is not usually treated as an engineering tool, with the various rituals that go with it. In contrast, take a look at how financial analysts lear…

So, yes, there is content that exists. What does not exist are real-world examples of problem solving a la open source. As I said in another comment, debugging Excel is incredibly opaque (#NA) and most people will never find what they are looking for when they Google "=GETPIVOTDATA #NA error."

There is no GitHub for Excel workbooks where people build and extend generalized solutions that people can read, understand, and learn from. There is also a total lack of comments in Excel formulas (short of VBA custom functions) so good luck deciphering the 5 line SUMIF in the 10 year old model you inherited.

Re: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t Tell Anyone You’re Good at It

#180

Post by gowld »

foobarrio wrote: post #131
guelo wrote: post #72

People 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.

This was my reaction to Flash. It's not a "real" programming environment is what everyone told me. Yea but it was a great authoring tool for non hard-core programmers. I helped a designer write a few simple puzzle games in Flash and it was overall a productive experience. Had I attempted to do that in html/JS I'm not sure it would have gone so smoothly. I haven't tried to write web games in the last 10 years so maybe…

Has anything replaced Flash as a productive way to build animated games?
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