3 ms·

Can you version/diff it though? Basically can you have a semi-sane software engineering process when it becomes big?

• moftz 10y ago
  You can track changes within Excel and with Office 2016, there is a comparison and merge tool included (that's been long overdue). But since the files are binary encoded, there is no external way to track changes unless someone wants to write up a parser for the XLSX format that can keep up with all the new features that MS adds every release.
  • bri3d 10y ago
    For what it's worth, XLSX files aren't binary. They're just XML in a ZIP. They're not particularly nasty to diff once they're extracted - actually, I think they might do pretty well in Git.
    • vsgxvhdxh 10y ago
      Ever tried editing the xml and rezipping? Also on examination you might notice the odd binary blob in the xml..
    • bjoerns 10y ago
      The diff is actually not really straightforward - a sheet is two-dimensional and you have to work out column/row inserts/deletes (which themselves are intertwined) before you can even start looking at cell changes. So it's quite non-standard stuff.
  • kofejnik 10y ago
    .docx and .xlsx are zipped xml, there are git plugins that produce reasonable diffs