4 ms·
In my 25+ years of using Excel, here's what makes a pro: 1. Someone who knows how to use two dimensional TABLE()s and vector functions. 2. Someone who can impl
by pq0ak2nnd 8y ago
In my 25+ years of using Excel, here's what makes a pro:
1. Someone who knows how to use two dimensional TABLE()s and vector functions.
2. Someone who can implement an imperative convergence (such as Newton/Raphson or non-plug-in goal seek)
3. Someone who can audit their dependencies and not shit out dozens of unused vars
4. Someone who knows the limit is 10 sheets and 20MB. :)
Visual Basic and shortcuts do not a pro make. VB makes Excel =less= usable, IMHO because now there is an extra dimension to debugging that requires understand each Macro and what it touches: it breaks the entire philosophy of show formulas + auditing.
Yes, this sounds like /r/iamverysmart and /r/gatekeeping, but I'll own that.
- tomnipotent 8y ago> 4. Someone who knows the limit is 10 sheets and 20MB Excel can now deal with many gigs of data thanks to PowerPivot and the addition of an in-memory database.
- jgamman 8y agoit's not excel that's the problem - it's you or your replacement 6 months later trying to reverse engineer the iterated solution that you willed into being... ;-)
- pq0ak2nnd 8y agoTruer words have never been spoken.
- pq0ak2nnd 8y agoFTFY: "Excel THINKS IT CAN DEAL with many gigs of data thanks to PowerPivot and the addition of an in-memory database." It's so cute when I hit ctrl-downarrow on a blank sheet and Excel sends me to row 1,048,576. Wishful thinking because if I ever filled 1M cells with functions, well... lololololol... time to use JMP...
- tomnipotent 8y agoI'm guessing you've never used these features if this is your comment.
- TabTwo 8y agoCisco Global Pricelist, there are still not enough lines in .xlsx to cover all their products
- tomnipotent 8y agoIf you're putting the data in Excel's new data model, this is no longer a problem. I regularly have files with tens of millions of rows of data which pivot tables can work against with sub-second aggregations across multiple columns.
- intended 8y agoIs this in 2016, and do you have to do anything specific to make it load large data sets ?
- tomnipotent 8y agoActually much earlier in 2012, when Excel first shipped with xVelocity branded PowerPivot. It supports a new data model that reminds me of Microsoft Access in some ways (drag & drop relationships etc). This is a whole different beast from copy/pasting data into sheets - in fact, the data doesn't show up in sheets by default and you usually have to add other things (like pivot tables) to take advantage of it. Microsoft is a sleeping giant in BI self-service right now, and the things they've been "quietly" adding (only if you don't follow them) are actually very compelling. I actually run a Windows VM on my MBP just so I can run Power BI.
- intended 8y agoIs this power bi..? Ah, I think it is. I’ve really tried to get up to speed with it, but it feels so alien to normal excel in many ways. I feel an existential dread when I drop a column in power BI. But yeah, it’s very powerful. It’s very sql like in the way you have to treat actions and data.
- mch82 8y agoAlso, use of named cells and ranges. Names make formulas much more readable!
- intended 8y ago>Someone who knows the limit is 10 sheets and 20MB. :) Hahaha. Isn’t that the truth. It’s come to a point that there is only one true workflow for actual business excel work. 1) Back up your source data and then never touch it. 2) Clean source data, make sure you use tables. 3) As soon as possible, separate data from calculation. All work, will probably be used more than once. So there is never really anything like “scratch work”. So when you open excel make it a point for it to be readable. I’ve taken To ensuring calculated fields are at the end of the table. With a column header indicating that this is not native to the original data set. Document your weird steps.
- incompatible 8y agoBefore you get anywhere near this point, why not just use a real database and programming language?
- laurent123456 8y agoDb and programming language will give you a backend. You'll still need a front end to display the info, and Excel is great at that. Not to mention you can send an Excel file by email, but you can't just send Docker containers to your clients and colleagues to run your spreadsheet.
- nuclx 8y agoOr just send the payload exported as JSON/CSV. We keep all kinds of project-relevant information in Word-/Excel-documents even checked into source control - plus these documents are used as a means to poll data from the customer. I'm actively fighting this terrible practice by writing some simple CRUD UIs (currently with React, but .NET would be a good choice too), to be able to transform project parameters influencing application configuration on our and on the customer side.
- abledon 8y agoThat’s when you upgrade to Microsoft access
- 0x445442 8y agoI’ve wondered on more than one occasion how many business problems could be solved much more quickly by just using excel as the front end gui/view instead of using some heavy weight client technology or worse, a web app.
- edraferi 8y agoBecause there’s too much overhead, it’s too hard to share, and the benefits don’t show up until the problem is more complex than most people ever need.
- 8y ago
- konradx 8y agoI Excel at this
- newguynewguy 8y agoOver 10 sheets and 20mb what should one switch to? Start a database?