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I have to see some red flags here. The very nature and power of Excel comes from the fact that workbooks can stand alone. This means that the process is eternal
by baz00 3y ago
I have to see some red flags here. The very nature and power of Excel comes from the fact that workbooks can stand alone. This means that the process is eternally tied to the cloud now. So when you, 3 years down the line, have to open a workbook from your deceased colleague, you are at the whim of the vendor supporting the existence of this integration.
Step one of any workload will always be "work out how to make the software work again" and that's terrible.
I know this because I have been in that situation several times in the last couple of decades with random Excel, outlook and word add-ins. And those don't even do the processing remotely!
- duxup 3y agoYeah I’ve received so many broken Excel documents and it’s just constant frustration. Half the things don’t work, customer is sure it worked in X ( now broken and invisible way ) and they really don’t remember that correctly.
- mrits 3y agoI haven't used a non-cloud spreadsheet in probably 7 years. I also wouldn't use excel for anything that has a combination of high importance and long lifetime though. It's mostly for some brainstorming or thrown in a presentation as a screenshot.
- csdvrx 3y ago> I haven't used a non-cloud spreadsheet in probably 7 years. Last time I use a cloud spreasheet was a month ago, to download the content into Excel > I also wouldn't use excel for anything that has a combination of high importance and long lifetime though. It's mostly for some brainstorming or thrown in a presentation as a screenshot. It's funny but that's exactly how I see online spreadsheet: for unimportant things that may not work at any point in the future if the account is closed. However, the collaborative features make them nice for brainstorming.
- mrits 3y agoIf I had to download content locally I would tell them to resend a csv. I hope you are doing this on a VM
- datavirtue 3y agoThere is probably a trillion dollars flowing through Excel spreadsheets.
- dnadler 3y agoLikely a gross underestimate, given all the financial (both investment and risk) modeling done with excel.
- datavirtue 3y agoI was trying to be conservative.
- ayhanfuat 3y agoI think this is easier to manage to be honest. They are using Anaconda distributions so if you tie each workbook to a distribution with possibility to update/rollback it makes things a lot easier than trying to manage a local installation.
- baz00 3y agoTry explaining that to the dude who inherited the workbook in 9 months who doesn't know what Anaconda is, barely knows what Python is and was told that his job was Excel which he's really good at because he did a Udemy course on it 3 years ago. That's the problem.
- ayhanfuat 3y agoI would assume that workbook would be tied to a version that it was created in and the if the user does not want to update they can just continue using it with the older Anaconda distribution. They don't really need to know what Anaconda is in this scenario. It only becomes necessary if you want to update a certain workbook to a newer version.
- darkarmani 3y agoI'm not sure why that is a problem. He didn't have to know anything about Anaconda. And for stability, you can still install 10-year old python 2.7 packages from Anaconda. 9 months is no problem at all for stability.
- seanw444 3y ago> This means that the process is eternally tied to the cloud now. "You will own nothing, and you will be happy" has followed us to... spreadsheets? We can't even own the things we're wageslaving away at our desk for.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> We can't even own the things we're wageslaving away at our desk for. But we never owned those things we're wageslaving away at our desk for, that's why its called wageslaving. Whether our employers own them or rent them seems pretty immaterial.
- seanw444 3y agoYeah I didn't phrase it well. My point was even our work is becoming intangible now "for the greater good." Just funny to see the progression of things.
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y agothe 'cool' thing is that not even the purported 'business owner' owns their own data, what do they actually own? what is even their business? on the modern trend, all businesses really are: is just a collection of subscriptions to service providers like MS.... where's the actual business???
- jedberg 3y agoThis will be true whether it uses the cloud or not. Excel worksheets can already have external links (both on the Web and to other files). If those web resources or other files aren't available, you're out of luck! And the older ones may only open on software that no longer runs on modern machines. This is why it's important to restore your backups once in a while, or in this case, validate your critical files.
- sebazzz 3y agoExternal links in Excel are copied and cached though.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThe new competition to this market have gained market share by making workbooks not stand alone, it's a whole growing product segment. So they either have to evolve or die. It's not a red flag, it's evolution
- rukuu001 3y agoIt's an exacerbation of an existing problem - who has not been sent an Excel file and opened it to discover some Sharepoint (or whatever) link is missing.
- sebazzz 3y ago> This means that the process is eternally tied to the cloud now. Not only the cloud, also the subscription. If you cancel the subscription (note that the announcement mentioned it might be a paid module), don't have the subscription (because you got the Excel from a supplier), etc. you already have a problem using this Excel sheet.