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> Speadsheets are great at a lot of things, but data validation doesn't tend to be one of them. What limitations are you thinking of? I can go to Data -> Data
by DavidPeiffer 6y ago
> Speadsheets are great at a lot of things, but data validation doesn't tend to be one of them.
What limitations are you thinking of? I can go to Data -> Data Tools -> Data Validation and restrict to whole number, decimal, list, date, time, or string length. If that's insufficient, you can create a custom formula which has to evaluate to TRUE for the input to be considered valid. Regex isn't supported out of the box, but quite a number of string functions are, and there are readily available Regex user defined functions (VBA called via formala) available online.
You can also customize the error alert that would be displayed to the user if they try to input something invalid. I think it'd work quite well for many MVP/single page web apps.
- grey-area 6y agoThe question is not what a sufficiently motivated competent person can do with the tools. It's what a sufficiently motivated incompetent person can do to your data with the tools. Infinite flexibility in the tooling means infinite ways to mess the database up in subtle and/or irredeemable ways, and a formula in a cell or even a regular expression are not great ways to tidy up real-world data, you often want autocorrect, autosuggest, defaults and friendly error messages for bad data rather than just ERROR IN CELL G91. When you reach that level of complexity it becomes much harder to build something useful with a spreadsheet-like tool alone. It is a really interesting idea though and for certain classes of data could really work well.
- rvba 6y agoFor many Excel projects you dont need data validation though.