July 5th, 2004

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Technology
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A Pet Peeve About Excel

Microsoft Excel is a quality application. In fact, it’s probably the most reliable, effective Microsoft program I use. When was the last time you heard a legitimate complaint about it (compared to, say, Outlook or Word)? I do have one complaint about Excel, though. It’s not so much about the program, but about how people use it.

They use it for everything.

Groceries, party attendies, spelling tests–anything that’s in a list gets inserted into Excel. Tonight I received an editorial schedule in Excel which, in its entirity, looked like this:

August - Monday, June 28, 2004
September - Monday, July 26, 2004
October - Monday, August 16, 2004
November - Tuesday, September 7, 2004
December - Monday, September 27, 2004
January - Monday, October 18, 2004

This is using a pile-driver to pound a nail. Remarkably, I’ve just conveyed the same data using only plain text! Somewhere along the line, millions of people arrived at the same conclusion:

List of stuff = Excel

It’s inexplicable, but common practice. Let me offer some humble advice: when you’ve got lots of data, use Excel. When you’ve got a list, NotePad or your email client will do just fine.

Comments: 4 Responses so far

Jody Cairns
July 5th, 2004
4:48 am

I’ve seen lots of program misuse too, although Excel seems to be the champion.

A minor quibble: I wouldn’t automatically suggest using Excel for “lots of data”. Excel isn’t a database: data can’t be entered by more than one user at a time (although an Excel file can be opened many times); it’s limited to 64k rows (or was - I haven’t used the latest version); it doesn’t support data integrity and similar features found in most database products.

[Reply]

Myron
July 5th, 2004
8:07 am

I dare anyone to beat what I consider the cardinal sins of Microsoft Office use (and as I’m a legal secretary, I see this all the time) - and it happens to be in Word:

1) people who create long (I mean pages and pages long) tables…using TABS instead of tables; and,

2) people who create hanging indents by typing in one line of text, pressing “Return”, tabbing in for the next line of text, typing it in, pressing “Return”, etc.

I have had to spend many frustrating minutes cleaning up these messes because they let amateurs use Word. I say either write it down or dictate it and then give it to me, but don’t use the computer until you know how.

Sorry about the rant…but I feel better now.

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secretGeek
July 5th, 2004
6:35 pm

So true Darren

Also there are times when the mythical “excel lite” is by far the choice application over excel….

http://www.secretgeek.net/excelLite.asp

cheers
lb

[Reply]

Mike Schinkel
July 6th, 2004
2:54 am

>> It’s inexplicable, but common practice. Let me offer some humble advice: when you’ve got lots of data, use Excel.

Actually, when you’ve got lots of data, use a database! (like Access).

I too believe that people misuse Excel, but on the other end of the spectrum. It doesn’t do nearly as much harm for them to use Excel for a small list as it does for them to use Excel for what is fundamentally a database application.

Unfortunately, designing a database isn’t for the uneducated, and the editing tools provided for the average user still suck to this day, so humans will be humans and we’ll unfortunately see databases in Excel for years to come.

OTOH, if you are reading this and are a heavy user of Excel, do yourself and your company a HUGE favor and learn how to use Access; chances are you already have it installed.

[Reply]

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