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No. I flinched hard at this, because this only works until it doesn't. I've done the exact same thing: give a user a location to upload an Excel set up just t
by shrikant 5y ago
No.
I flinched hard at this, because this only works until it doesn't.
I've done the exact same thing: give a user a location to upload an Excel set up just the way we'd want to parse it.
Good luck dealing with the absolute morass of formatting troubles that Excel throws at you because:
1) The user didn't format a date input correctly and now Excel treats it as a simple string instead of its internal Date representation
2) Excel mysteriously treats a random entry in a numeric or date column (PEBKAC? Who knows! The user denies all wrong-doing!) as a string and now it's got a leading apostrophe
3) The user used someone else's computer which has different Regional Settings, and suddenly:
3a) Commas are decimal points in numbers instead of periods
3b) Date formatting is messed up
3c) Months and days have their names in a different language
...
And these are just the issues that I can remember without having to dredge through painful memories.
- antris 5y agoSure, you know better than the person that actually implemented it and tells us it worked out fine. Because you've done something similar before and failed. The exact kind of know-it-all attitude I was talking about. Thanks for the demonstration :)
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y agoTo be honest I also had bad experiences with processes like this - very simple data entry mistakes which were basically invisible to the user made the entire thing fail.
- snoopen 5y agoMost of these are easy to work around our aren't unique to Excel: 1 & 2) isn't unique to Excel, incorrect inputs will give incorrect results in code too 3, 4 & 5) worked around by getting the internal raw numeric value then formatting it as required.