4 ms·

Our department gets a few thousand projects a year (work in large format printing). The amount of repetitive steps that each project share is simply mind boggli

by kevas 9y ago

Our department gets a few thousand projects a year (work in large format printing). The amount of repetitive steps that each project share is simply mind boggling. By writing 10 or so scripts, was able to shave department labor hours down by 14%. Excel... how people use excel and the amount of waste that happens just because they don't properly know how to use 'vlookup' or 'if' simply just boils my blood.

overcast 9y ago
Excel is the universal format for the enterprise. Need to share a screen shot of your error? Paste it into excel. Project management? Excel. Database of assets? Excel. Transactional information? Excel. Incredibly complex, multi page calculations? Excel. Kill me.
- w4tson 9y ago
  I once saw a very detailed Gantt chart in MS Project detailing 6 months worth of lies about various projects would deliver. My colleague nudged me out of a stupor as I stared at the overhead projection. "Its Excel!" He whispered. "What are you on about?" I said. He was clearly mad. "The chart! He's done it in Excel". To my horror I began to see. This wasn't MS Project at all. It was subtle because the cells were so small they were almost no bigger than a pixel. I gasped and almost took the presentation off course. It was like a mosaic. A feat. I've never seen anything like it since. Still baffles me how much effort he must have put in and the pain he must've felt every time that crappy plan inevitably moved to the right.
  - overcast 9y ago
    I'm not sure if we should commend, or condemn Microsoft for making a application that is so easily used by less than savvy end users.
ellius 9y ago
I act as sort of a clearing house / accidental DB admin within my department. The amount of time I have to spend cleaning up people's Excel input data is absurd.
newbear 9y ago
I'm working for a big nonprofit that uses convio for web donations and raisersedge for data management but the two don't link up so I have to downland the csv from convio clean it up in excel and import into raisersedge. I run a large macro and do some cleaning manually too but would love to offer them a better solution. ..or I want to suggest better software because raisersedge is atrocious

by kevas 9y ago

overcast 9y ago

Excel is the universal format for the enterprise. Need to share a screen shot of your error? Paste it into excel. Project management? Excel. Database of assets? Excel. Transactional information? Excel. Incredibly complex, multi page calculations? Excel. Kill me.

w4tson 9y ago
I once saw a very detailed Gantt chart in MS Project detailing 6 months worth of lies about various projects would deliver. My colleague nudged me out of a stupor as I stared at the overhead projection. "Its Excel!" He whispered. "What are you on about?" I said. He was clearly mad. "The chart! He's done it in Excel". To my horror I began to see. This wasn't MS Project at all. It was subtle because the cells were so small they were almost no bigger than a pixel. I gasped and almost took the presentation off course. It was like a mosaic. A feat. I've never seen anything like it since. Still baffles me how much effort he must have put in and the pain he must've felt every time that crappy plan inevitably moved to the right.
- overcast 9y ago
  I'm not sure if we should commend, or condemn Microsoft for making a application that is so easily used by less than savvy end users.

ellius 9y ago

I act as sort of a clearing house / accidental DB admin within my department. The amount of time I have to spend cleaning up people's Excel input data is absurd.

newbear 9y ago

I'm working for a big nonprofit that uses convio for web donations and raisersedge for data management but the two don't link up so I have to downland the csv from convio clean it up in excel and import into raisersedge. I run a large macro and do some cleaning manually too but would love to offer them a better solution. ..or I want to suggest better software because raisersedge is atrocious