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Excel has a known row limit. Anyone blaming the row limit is trying to dodge blame. I have the exact same respect for those folks as I do for folks that misus

Excel has a known row limit. Anyone blaming the row limit is trying to dodge blame. I have the exact same respect for those folks as I do for folks that misuse a hammer. I have written Perl scripts that dump the results of SQL queries into a spreadsheet and do additional tabs when the row limit is reached. The tool didn't do the damage, the tool using the tool did. IT people hate Excel because normal people can get work done, much like HyperCard and Flash before it. Perhaps someone will write a more IT friendly Excel without losing the users.

dash2 6y ago
I'm sympathetic, especially given this was core infrastructure for a nationwide emergency. But, how many people do actually know the row limit? It's easy to say experts know it. But is it discoverable from within the interface? If you're a management consultant Excel jockey, is there a way you would have learned about this before tripping over it?
- protomyth 6y ago
  I do believe there is a huge warning when you do the import. I will verify when I get to work.
  - protomyth 6y ago
    Tried to open a 2 million row file and got an error dialog that must be clicked to continue with the text "Alert File not loaded completely." Excel's limits https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/excel-specifications-and-limits-1672b34d-7043-467e-8e27-269d656771c3 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/excel-specificati...
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  It's literally on the first thing that pops up when you search for "limitations excel". A consultant should know his tools, that's what you pay him for.
vsareto 6y ago
>IT people hate Excel because normal people can get work done This is arguably more a business problem, but there's real issues when people coming/going and then having to get familiar with dozens-hundreds of spreadsheets. Maybe if they're good at Excel, they just pick it up easily, I dunno, but I've rarely seen stuff like confluence documentation and edit history and other supporting docs for spreadsheets that are critical to the company. It kinda feels like they rely more on tribal knowledge than devs. Nothing about our languages or tools constrains devs to necessarily do this too, we've just got a culture of doing that stuff because we know how awful life is without it. Maybe it's different for spreadsheet people though. I could just keep the business code on a single hard drive and deploy by copy-pasting over a network share or through email, but you'd rightly call me mad.

dash2 6y ago

I'm sympathetic, especially given this was core infrastructure for a nationwide emergency. But, how many people do actually know the row limit? It's easy to say experts know it. But is it discoverable from within the interface? If you're a management consultant Excel jockey, is there a way you would have learned about this before tripping over it?

protomyth 6y ago
I do believe there is a huge warning when you do the import. I will verify when I get to work.
- protomyth 6y ago
  Tried to open a 2 million row file and got an error dialog that must be clicked to continue with the text "Alert File not loaded completely." Excel's limits https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/excel-specifications-and-limits-1672b34d-7043-467e-8e27-269d656771c3 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/excel-specificati...
NicoJuicy 6y ago
It's literally on the first thing that pops up when you search for "limitations excel". A consultant should know his tools, that's what you pay him for.

vsareto 6y ago

>IT people hate Excel because normal people can get work done This is arguably more a business problem, but there's real issues when people coming/going and then having to get familiar with dozens-hundreds of spreadsheets. Maybe if they're good at Excel, they just pick it up easily, I dunno, but I've rarely seen stuff like confluence documentation and edit history and other supporting docs for spreadsheets that are critical to the company. It kinda feels like they rely more on tribal knowledge than devs. Nothing about our languages or tools constrains devs to necessarily do this too, we've just got a culture of doing that stuff because we know how awful life is without it. Maybe it's different for spreadsheet people though. I could just keep the business code on a single hard drive and deploy by copy-pasting over a network share or through email, but you'd rightly call me mad.