51–60 of 518 posts
That said: every datetime function I've ever written is also garbage so... glass houses, I guess?
It is just so fun when you have @ as a lead character for fields. You can do DATA-IMPORT from CSV and it is fine but if you just double click load a CSV from explorer it tries to interpret the data as a formula and randomly loses the @ I have not check myself the full list of special characters that cannot be loaded CSV style from Explorer but one should expect consistency with DATA-IMPORT functionality
Two more examples. In a CSV with zip codes, Excel drops the leading zero: Boston, 02114. A CSV with text ranges: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30... becomes 10-Jan and 20-Nov!
Why don't people use the import options available to them? You can select the precise data type of each column if you know the format anyway.
While the default choices that Excel makes are questionable at times, they're both known and can easily be overridden.
To people asking, "why do they use Excel?" that's like asking "why must we be subjected to gravity?" The whole world's data ultimately comes from or ends up in an Excel spreadsheet. Sure, we might use other intermediate data storage methods, but in the end it's going to go into some scientist's or some politician's computer, and by golly it's gonna be in Excel. Trying to rally against Excel is like trying to rally ag…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't understand the problem. Read the article.
I read the article and parent is correct in part. However, equally the article touches on the fact that many people may use a spreadsheet and not all will be correctly trained to use their complex tools properly, in order to ensure data integrity. I consider this a failing not in software or Excel, but in education and professional standards. Scientists can be expected to understand and use their tools correctly, sin…
To people asking, "why do they use Excel?" that's like asking "why must we be subjected to gravity?" The whole world's data ultimately comes from or ends up in an Excel spreadsheet. Sure, we might use other intermediate data storage methods, but in the end it's going to go into some scientist's or some politician's computer, and by golly it's gonna be in Excel. Trying to rally against Excel is like trying to rally ag…
When I worked in clinical trial design/analysis, no one did their analyses in excel, but for initial data formatting and clean-up? /everything/ went through excel, even if the final cleanup was a python script.
You’re not going to have the same ease of eyeballing your data in SPSS or SAS or R.
It's honestly amazing that Excel hasn't fixed this issue. It's pisses off an enormous number of users especially in basically any non-US country (even if 01/02 is a date, it isn't the second of January in most of the world...)
It's honestly amazing that Excel hasn't fixed this issue. It's pisses off an enormous number of users especially in basically any non-US country (even if 01/02 is a date, it isn't the second of January in most of the world...)
For Germany this converts to the first of Feb, and this way of entering dates is just so convenient, as you can type the whole date just using the keys from the num block. We do actually support this format in our app for date entry, simply because it's so convenient.
Final Jeopardy : Trebeck: You know what, how about you just write down a number, any number at all. Could be a 1 or a 2, perhaps 3... and excel you answered; A smiley face emoji, simply stunning. Excel is no longer motivated by the original intention of a spreadsheet, and now caters to the lowest common denominator, a piece of graph paper. As such MS has shifted focus from doing calculation to text and graphics layou…
Your comment about graph paper echoes a comment from a former Excel PM: "The gridlines are the most important feature of Excel, not recalc."
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...
It's honestly amazing that Excel hasn't fixed this issue. It's pisses off an enormous number of users especially in basically any non-US country (even if 01/02 is a date, it isn't the second of January in most of the world...)
That's because it's not an issue at all. It's people using a tool without knowing said tool. You can disable auto-formatting (or even better yet - set the column data type) with a simple click.
Why in the world is excel the application of choice? Last time I tried to use it (for much less complicated things than genetics), it choked and became unusable when the filesize exceeded about 6MB. I have yet to encounter a spreadsheet oriented task that isn't better implemented in gnumeric. Maybe we should also shorten all publications so adobe reader can display them without crashing?