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it sounds like you may be getting tripped up by a setting that will expand your selections automatically, even when you don’t want that. Try disabling this.

it sounds like you may be getting tripped up by a setting that will expand your selections automatically, even when you don’t want that. Try disabling this. -Settings: Edit: Select entire word when selecting text. There are some other settings there that you may or may not want enabled. Excel (or any spreadsheet) is good for calculations if you set things up responsibly. Don’t throw things together casually and expect it to just figure it out. Build your formulas in modules so that you can check results. Test the model. This is a kind of programming and will do better if you treat it like that.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Excel doesn't provide tools for unit testing and such. Most of the people who use Excel have no idea that methodologies like that exist.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  no unit testing, but you can break your calculations up into reasonably understandable units where you can verify the output before incorporating that into a larger formula. I frequently have hidden columns where I do parts of a calculation and then other columns that use those interim results for the final result. It does have overhead of more calculations but the payoff is fewer bugs and easier to verify in chunks.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    A lot of that is discipline on the part of the operator. You run into the same problem with "data scientists" using Python or R who aren't familiar with software engineering practices. One thing I like about Excel is that it has a programming model that automatically solves dependencies on a graph so you don't need to tell it what order to compute things in, it just automatically updates the sheet when you change something. That would be such a useful facility to have for writing graphical user interfaces, in fact there are a few frameworks that are oriented that way https://mobx.js.org/README.html https://mobx.js.org/README.html One trouble I see with Excel is that there is not a clear separation between code and data which makes reuse hard. One area where "data scientists" get hung up is that they often think "I'm going to make the May 2022 sales report" or "I'm going to build the May 2022 language model" and don't really get that it not about making a report or making a model but rather making a system that can make the report or model for June 2022, July 2022, whatever.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Excel doesn't provide tools for unit testing and such. Most of the people who use Excel have no idea that methodologies like that exist.

Tagbert 4y ago
no unit testing, but you can break your calculations up into reasonably understandable units where you can verify the output before incorporating that into a larger formula. I frequently have hidden columns where I do parts of a calculation and then other columns that use those interim results for the final result. It does have overhead of more calculations but the payoff is fewer bugs and easier to verify in chunks.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  A lot of that is discipline on the part of the operator. You run into the same problem with "data scientists" using Python or R who aren't familiar with software engineering practices. One thing I like about Excel is that it has a programming model that automatically solves dependencies on a graph so you don't need to tell it what order to compute things in, it just automatically updates the sheet when you change something. That would be such a useful facility to have for writing graphical user interfaces, in fact there are a few frameworks that are oriented that way https://mobx.js.org/README.html https://mobx.js.org/README.html One trouble I see with Excel is that there is not a clear separation between code and data which makes reuse hard. One area where "data scientists" get hung up is that they often think "I'm going to make the May 2022 sales report" or "I'm going to build the May 2022 language model" and don't really get that it not about making a report or making a model but rather making a system that can make the report or model for June 2022, July 2022, whatever.