3 ms·

FWIW, fixes/improvements for some of those fundamental issues are coming and/or available in preview releases. Like new+custom data types: https://www.microsof

FWIW, fixes/improvements for some of those fundamental issues are coming and/or available in preview releases. Like new+custom data types: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/10/29/connect-to-your-own-data-with-more-new-data-types-in-excel/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/10/2... And LAMBDA for custom functions: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ultimatae-excel-worksheet-function/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ult... I get the impression that in recent years Microsoft's become more willing to make fundamental changes to Excel. Still early days but I'm cautiously optimistic that things are getting better.

dspillett 6y ago
Oh my [deity], what are they creating?! I first read those thinking "cool, I'll have to let nerdy me have a play with all that". I actually often use Excel for various bits & bobs, and must (as a database guy and ex-Jack-of-all dev) shamefully admit to finding it useful and sometimes really liking it. But... Then my mind moved on to "oh hell, what holes are our clients going to dig for themselves if they catch wind of some of this?". Even when talking about existing functionality that you might want to use along with these new tools they say "It took us some time to understand the precise rules that drive this behavior". It took Microsoft's research people some time to understand the ins and outs of features in Microsoft Excel and they talk about this with apparent pride in a paper published by Microsoft. I look forward to being witness to the minting of brand new expletives, when the reporting team are handed a gargantuan KPI calculations workbook that uses these tools, and asked to reproduce it in our environment (but make it work properly as "there are a few bits that occasionally give odd results and have to be adjusted manually sometimes" - not that they'll mention those oddities until we've banged or head against them a couple of times or in UAT they ask "but how do we tweak the financial sprocket count result for dept X only, when Y happens?"), which they assume we can do that in practically zero time...

dspillett 6y ago

Oh my [deity], what are they creating?! I first read those thinking "cool, I'll have to let nerdy me have a play with all that". I actually often use Excel for various bits & bobs, and must (as a database guy and ex-Jack-of-all dev) shamefully admit to finding it useful and sometimes really liking it. But... Then my mind moved on to "oh hell, what holes are our clients going to dig for themselves if they catch wind of some of this?". Even when talking about existing functionality that you might want to use along with these new tools they say "It took us some time to understand the precise rules that drive this behavior". It took Microsoft's research people some time to understand the ins and outs of features in Microsoft Excel and they talk about this with apparent pride in a paper published by Microsoft. I look forward to being witness to the minting of brand new expletives, when the reporting team are handed a gargantuan KPI calculations workbook that uses these tools, and asked to reproduce it in our environment (but make it work properly as "there are a few bits that occasionally give odd results and have to be adjusted manually sometimes" - not that they'll mention those oddities until we've banged or head against them a couple of times or in UAT they ask "but how do we tweak the financial sprocket count result for dept X only, when Y happens?"), which they assume we can do that in practically zero time...