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'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

theguardian.com

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Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#91

Post by radpanda »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #81
ChicagoDave wrote: post #67

I have my personal weekly budget spreadsheet open on my laptop at all times. I balance my checking account almost daily to know where all the money is going. I did pay for Monarch to see if it would be better and although it’s nice, Excel is still just better. One of my favorite tabs is taking a high interest loan or credit card and increasing the payment amounts (even a little) to reduce the overall impact of the in…

What does Excel do here that Google Sheets doesn’t? I don’t always carry my laptop with me, so local files are kind of annoying.

I’m not the commenter that you’re replying to but I always get a different “feel” when using a native application like Excel than a web app. I can type as fast as I can think, switching cells, typing values, invoking keyboard shortcuts, etc, and every keystroke is interpreted as I intended. It’s incredible what’s been achieved in modern web apps like Google Sheets, but I still feel like I need to slow down at times to watch what the app is up to - making sure the cell was selected in the UI before entering text or watching to be sure the browser didn’t intercept a shortcut, etc.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#92

Post by alwillis »

I use Numbers for my day-to-day spreadsheet stuff, part of Apple's iWork suite with Pages and Keynote.

The UI/UX is so much better than Excel's and you can export to .xlsx format.

Don't get me wrong--there are some projects that require the functionality that Excel has. Using it gives me 90's software PTSD but sometimes you have no choice.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#93

Post by kjellsbells »

wslh wrote: post #51

Based on this, I'd love to brainstorm here on HN about what a next-generation Excel could look like, one that keeps Excel’s core strengths without expanding into database like features found in tools like Airtable. Here are a few ideas: 1. Clear Separation between UI/UX and Backend: By separating the user interface from backend processes—perhaps as a module or library—Excel could maintain its clean, familiar interfac…

6? Explicit versioning of spreadsheets, eg a Commit to GitHub button. 365 saves continuously but doesnt have the mental step of making you record what changed. Along the same lines, diff for spreadsheets that supported diff-by-value and diff-by-formula.

7? Beef up the recommended pivot tables. Not to jump on the AI bandwagon, but any table that has Sales$ and dates is ripe for suggesting sales by qtr, week etc. Let the AI inspect the table and make suggestions.

8. Beef up the programmability. The Record Macro feature emits VBA but the code is very literal (eg it sees you move to row 12345, and records that, not understanding that what you mean is 'move to the last row') and the IDE is primitive. Fold in copilot experience to the IDE, modernize the UI, and allow macros to be integrated with github instead of buried in some personal.xlb file that is all too easy to lose.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#94

Post by skeeter2020 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #54
hotsauceror wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must admit, of all the stories I’ve heard about Excel spreadsheets being “this one goes up to eleven” in their complexity, “too many fonts” is a new one. Perhaps you could use an alternative differentiator for your data presentation? I’m morbidly curious to hear more about this scenario.

Not parent, but in my spreadsheets fonts map to certainty ranges. Serifs in increasing somberness for the most concrete numbers, sans for everyday estimates, and papyrus whenever I just toss random numbers in.

Could a human - in your scenario - differentiate the meaning between more than 8 fonts though?

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#95

Post by jimnotgym »

alwillis wrote: post #92

I use Numbers for my day-to-day spreadsheet stuff, part of Apple's iWork suite with Pages and Keynote. The UI/UX is so much better than Excel's and you can export to .xlsx format. Don't get me wrong--there are some projects that require the functionality that Excel has. Using it gives me 90's software PTSD but sometimes you have no choice.

And what do you do for a living may I ask? Accountant, Actuary, trader? I only ask if you are using some of the advanced features, which is where the others start to fall away.

Numbers is a fine way to keep a shopping list, or a household budget, I'm sure

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#96

Post by skeeter2020 »

leptons wrote: post #89
standardUser wrote: post #6

I have several extremely complex spreadsheets that have reached a breaking point because "the maximum number of fonts has been exceeded". There's like 8 fonts being used at most. The problem is, I don't have an alternative piece of software that can maintain the other very complicated formatting, let alone import it. And it now starts to revert formatting randomly throughout the spreadsheets. It's a widely known prob…

I can't imagine the use case for having more than 1 font in a spreadsheet. Please elaborate. I'm pretty sure Excel is the wrong tool for whatever job you are throwing at it.

Maybe a title, and perhaps some callout cells? but more than 8? I'm stretching to find a use case requiring 3 or 4.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#97

Post by biorach »

AnonC wrote: post #52
throwaway106382 wrote: post #16

I’ve only ever used Libre(open) Office Calc since I’ve never paid for or bothered to pirate office before. What can Excel do that Calc can’t? I’ve never done anything crazy heavy with it, but functions and stuff work fine for me I guess.

I use Calc on my personal machine. > What can Excel do that Calc can’t? For one, a working copy paste. Seriously, I’ve lived with a copy paste bug in LibreOffice Calc (Windows) for years (it wasn’t yet fixed as of a few months ago). It will either paste an older copy or not paste anything even though I just hit Ctrl+C (sometimes multiple times) within Calc. This is one of the most irritating things about Calc. Fonts…

> It will either paste an older copy or not paste anything even though I just hit Ctrl+C (sometimes multiple times) within Calc.

Weird. I've used Calc extensively on Windows and Linux and have never come across this

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#98

Post by lostlogin »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #67

I have my personal weekly budget spreadsheet open on my laptop at all times. I balance my checking account almost daily to know where all the money is going. I did pay for Monarch to see if it would be better and although it’s nice, Excel is still just better. One of my favorite tabs is taking a high interest loan or credit card and increasing the payment amounts (even a little) to reduce the overall impact of the in…

> I balance my checking account

Assuming that this relates to checks/cheques, are they going away in the US?

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#99

Post by jpalawaga »

alwillis wrote: post #92

I use Numbers for my day-to-day spreadsheet stuff, part of Apple's iWork suite with Pages and Keynote. The UI/UX is so much better than Excel's and you can export to .xlsx format. Don't get me wrong--there are some projects that require the functionality that Excel has. Using it gives me 90's software PTSD but sometimes you have no choice.

I'm the opposite. I cannot stand Apple's productivity software, and I get irrationally mad when something tries to open those.

Re: 'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel

#100

Post by skeeter2020 »

fsckboy wrote: post #36
quickthrowman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a widely known problem with no solution I can find to date. I can think of a solution: don’t use 9 different fonts. You have cell background and text foreground color, font size, bold, underline, italics, strike through, cell border styles, conditional formatting, etc. There are plenty of formatting tools in Excel. What are you not able to accomplish with those that you can accomplish with 9 font faces?

> don’t use 9 different fonts. You have ... font size, bold, underline, italics so, what you are calling "fonts" (Arial, Times) are actually called "typefaces" every pointsize in a typeface is a new font, and bold and italics the same. so, we don't know if Excel is making the same common/casual error you are, but if their error message is "technically correct (the best kind of correct)", then italics and bold in each…

you can be very pedantic about it, but Excel has no problem with 8+ variations of font size, color, and formatting, and everyone outside of typeface designers and newspaper men references typefaces as "the font".
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