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So after all, it seems like it was not strictly an Excel issue, but rather the unknown automated tool[1] that transformed .csv's with more than 65,536 lines int
by jaclaz 6y ago
So after all, it seems like it was not strictly an Excel issue, but rather the unknown automated tool[1] that transformed .csv's with more than 65,536 lines into the "old" .xls format (that does have a known 65.536 line limit) truncating data (evidently without reporting any error or warning).
And of course the "dashboards" using .xls data as input seem a lot like an unfortunate choice.
As a side note, it seems to me perplexing that 65,536 rows can contain only 1,400 patients' data, that is 65,536/1,400= 46 lines per patient, so even the original .csv must have been more similar to a .ini file than to a common (multicolumn) .csv.
[1] which could be still an Excel "automated" by some scripting
- davidgerard 6y agoauthor here - it's not clear what the actual software was, and it doesn't appear Excel was actually to blame. The real problem was that this was heroic gaffer-tape to work around completely unnecessary problems. (also, a tech error crept into the article - LO doesn't automatically fix Excel's crappy math, it just has alternate formulae that behave correctly that you can use instead of Excel's broken ones: multiple variants of FLOOR, CEILING, WEEKNUM, some of the fancier statistical stuff I think. I've flagged the error to the editor.)