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I have several extremely complex spreadsheets that have reached a breaking point because "the maximum number of fonts has been exceeded". There's like 8 fonts

I have several extremely complex spreadsheets that have reached a breaking point because "the maximum number of fonts has been exceeded". There's like 8 fonts being used at most. The problem is, I don't have an alternative piece of software that can maintain the other very complicated formatting, let alone import it. And it now starts to revert formatting randomly throughout the spreadsheets. It's a widely known problem with no solution I can find to date. Google Sheets is great, but I'm probably one of the very few people who thinks we need a more robust and feature rich spreadsheet software, if only to compel Microsoft to strengthen their own.

hotsauceror 2y ago
I must admit, of all the stories I’ve heard about Excel spreadsheets being “this one goes up to eleven” in their complexity, “too many fonts” is a new one. Perhaps you could use an alternative differentiator for your data presentation? I’m morbidly curious to hear more about this scenario.
- CogitoCogito 2y ago
  To add my own anecdote, I've needed to use a lot of spreadsheets the last couple weeks and quickly became annoyed that different cells could have different fonts (which would sometimes happen when I was pasting in data). Of course I quickly learned to just paste in everything unformatted, but I thought to myself "why would anyone want to set fonts per cell?" I guess I just don't get out enough.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    The "paste with styles" default is one of the worst things ever IMO. It's almost never what I want.
    - andersa 2y ago
      I hate it so much... some programs are even worse, they don't take ctrl shift v to get rid of the garbage. I've made it a habit to first paste stuff in a text editor, copy it again, and then paste it into programs like outlook so the formatting won't be all messed up... Still don't know of a single case where the "feature" was useful.
      - ddingus 2y ago
        PowerPoint Paste with source formatting or theme, I can't recall the exact name right now, rules. It means being able to mooch slides from any file and use them with no real fuss. An alternative is to turn the slide into a bitmap.
        SoftTalker 2y ago
        I get that there are a few cases where it's useful. Make those require "ALT-SHIFT' or whatever. Make normal paste insert just the text.
        ddingus 2y ago
        Yep. I agree! Sorry, it just popped out. Your primary point is solid. Seconded.
      - leni536 2y ago
        Fortunately Teams takes ctrl shift v, and it also leaves links untouched. Unfortunately it's rather easy to mistype it as ctrl shift c, which --as you might have guessed-- is "call everyone".
        lostlogin 2y ago
        Amazing.
      - cartoonfoxes 2y ago
        Try the "Paste as plain text" tool in PowerToys - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/advanced-paste https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/advanced....
  - intended 2y ago
    I think you are in good company. I’ve used excel extensively, and I’ve never even conceived of that number of fonts specifically being needed. Let alone breaking excel on fonts.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    I’ve wondered about it for years; why is the ‘paste’ command not ‘paste without style’ by default? A system level option to change this would be a vast improvement. I’ve seen all sorts of gross workarounds. The URL bar is my go to these days, mainly because that works on mobile.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Not parent, but in my spreadsheets fonts map to certainty ranges. Serifs in increasing somberness for the most concrete numbers, sans for everyday estimates, and papyrus whenever I just toss random numbers in.
  - skeeter2020 2y ago
    Could a human - in your scenario - differentiate the meaning between more than 8 fonts though?
    - pxc 2y ago
      When you've slowly built up a UI for your own purposes— whether the accretions are font faces or keybindings or context menu items— definitely! Picture a spreadsheet/convention that has evolved over the course of 6 years, seeing continuous use throughout that time. As someone with color discrimination problems and contrast difficulties, I would so much prefer font/style coding over color coding. Sounds great!
  - zvr 2y ago
    Now, this is extremely interesting! I am not a fan of encoding information in the presentation layer and I would use an extra column to show the "certainty" explicitly, but using different fonts in addition is an excellent idea. Many thanks for this! Even in this case, though, I doubt you would go over the threshold of 8 fonts that was mentioned.
DrBazza 2y ago
And there I was getting bothered about the limits of the xlcall c api.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  Running 32-bit Excel mitigates quite a few of the limits. Sadly, I haven't managed to get WoW64 DLLs to load in 64-bit Excel: that would eliminate the majority of the issues, but it's tricky to set that up in the first place without the ability to store 64-bit return values (e.g. handles).
quickthrowman 2y ago
> It's a widely known problem with no solution I can find to date. I can think of a solution: don’t use 9 different fonts. You have cell background and text foreground color, font size, bold, underline, italics, strike through, cell border styles, conditional formatting, etc. There are plenty of formatting tools in Excel. What are you not able to accomplish with those that you can accomplish with 9 font faces?
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >don’t use 9 different fonts. You have ... font size, bold, underline, italics so, what you are calling "fonts" (Arial, Times) are actually called "typefaces" every pointsize in a typeface is a new font, and bold and italics the same. so, we don't know if Excel is making the same common/casual error you are, but if their error message is "technically correct (the best kind of correct)", then italics and bold in each pointsize are all separate fonts, and that's what he might have too many of.
  - skeeter2020 2y ago
    you can be very pedantic about it, but Excel has no problem with 8+ variations of font size, color, and formatting, and everyone outside of typeface designers and newspaper men references typefaces as "the font".
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Excel also has no problem with more than a dozen typefaces, with one size/style of each (I just tested it.) The error message is probably using “fonts” in the technically correct sense for combinations of typeface, size, and style, while the user experiencing the error is probably confused and reporting that they are only using 8 “fonts” using the term to mean typefaces (which is how Excel itself uses the term in the UI, with the typeface selector using the label “Fonts”.) But if you are using 8 typefaces, using multiple sizes and styles of each, you can easily be using over 100 actual fonts.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
leptons 2y ago
I can't imagine the use case for having more than 1 font in a spreadsheet. Please elaborate. I'm pretty sure Excel is the wrong tool for whatever job you are throwing at it.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  Maybe a title, and perhaps some callout cells? but more than 8? I'm stretching to find a use case requiring 3 or 4.
- jen729w 2y ago
  > I'm pretty sure Excel is the wrong tool for whatever job you are throwing at it. Thanks, you completed my bingo card.
- kichimi 2y ago
  I feel like this is a pretty important thing for the technically minded to get their heads around. Doesn't the fact that you can't imagine a single reason why youd want multiple fonts on a spreadsheet alarm you?
  - leptons 2y ago
    Excel is for spreadsheets, 9+ fonts is not really a common use case for a spreadsheet. It sounds like OP is trying to do graphic design in Excel, but we'll probably never find out.
- fragmede 2y ago
  You're pretty sure it's the wrong tool, but you can't imagine a use case for a fairly basic feature of said tool? Why do I now doubt your assertion?
  - leptons 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - 2y ago
fuzzfactor 2y ago
Try it with more memory and/or larger swapfile space on your drive. It might be OK until 8 specialty fonts need to be reproduced beyond a certain number of cells. If more memory was all it takes to fix, that would be good to know.

hotsauceror 2y ago

I must admit, of all the stories I’ve heard about Excel spreadsheets being “this one goes up to eleven” in their complexity, “too many fonts” is a new one. Perhaps you could use an alternative differentiator for your data presentation? I’m morbidly curious to hear more about this scenario.

CogitoCogito 2y ago
To add my own anecdote, I've needed to use a lot of spreadsheets the last couple weeks and quickly became annoyed that different cells could have different fonts (which would sometimes happen when I was pasting in data). Of course I quickly learned to just paste in everything unformatted, but I thought to myself "why would anyone want to set fonts per cell?" I guess I just don't get out enough.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  The "paste with styles" default is one of the worst things ever IMO. It's almost never what I want.
  - andersa 2y ago
    I hate it so much... some programs are even worse, they don't take ctrl shift v to get rid of the garbage. I've made it a habit to first paste stuff in a text editor, copy it again, and then paste it into programs like outlook so the formatting won't be all messed up... Still don't know of a single case where the "feature" was useful.
    - ddingus 2y ago
      PowerPoint Paste with source formatting or theme, I can't recall the exact name right now, rules. It means being able to mooch slides from any file and use them with no real fuss. An alternative is to turn the slide into a bitmap.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        I get that there are a few cases where it's useful. Make those require "ALT-SHIFT' or whatever. Make normal paste insert just the text.
        ddingus 2y ago
        Yep. I agree! Sorry, it just popped out. Your primary point is solid. Seconded.
    - leni536 2y ago
      Fortunately Teams takes ctrl shift v, and it also leaves links untouched. Unfortunately it's rather easy to mistype it as ctrl shift c, which --as you might have guessed-- is "call everyone".
      - lostlogin 2y ago
        Amazing.
    - cartoonfoxes 2y ago
      Try the "Paste as plain text" tool in PowerToys - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/advanced-paste https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/advanced....
- intended 2y ago
  I think you are in good company. I’ve used excel extensively, and I’ve never even conceived of that number of fonts specifically being needed. Let alone breaking excel on fonts.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  I’ve wondered about it for years; why is the ‘paste’ command not ‘paste without style’ by default? A system level option to change this would be a vast improvement. I’ve seen all sorts of gross workarounds. The URL bar is my go to these days, mainly because that works on mobile.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ethbr1 2y ago
Not parent, but in my spreadsheets fonts map to certainty ranges. Serifs in increasing somberness for the most concrete numbers, sans for everyday estimates, and papyrus whenever I just toss random numbers in.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  Could a human - in your scenario - differentiate the meaning between more than 8 fonts though?
  - pxc 2y ago
    When you've slowly built up a UI for your own purposes— whether the accretions are font faces or keybindings or context menu items— definitely! Picture a spreadsheet/convention that has evolved over the course of 6 years, seeing continuous use throughout that time. As someone with color discrimination problems and contrast difficulties, I would so much prefer font/style coding over color coding. Sounds great!
- zvr 2y ago
  Now, this is extremely interesting! I am not a fan of encoding information in the presentation layer and I would use an extra column to show the "certainty" explicitly, but using different fonts in addition is an excellent idea. Many thanks for this! Even in this case, though, I doubt you would go over the threshold of 8 fonts that was mentioned.

DrBazza 2y ago

And there I was getting bothered about the limits of the xlcall c api.

wizzwizz4 2y ago
Running 32-bit Excel mitigates quite a few of the limits. Sadly, I haven't managed to get WoW64 DLLs to load in 64-bit Excel: that would eliminate the majority of the issues, but it's tricky to set that up in the first place without the ability to store 64-bit return values (e.g. handles).

quickthrowman 2y ago

> It's a widely known problem with no solution I can find to date. I can think of a solution: don’t use 9 different fonts. You have cell background and text foreground color, font size, bold, underline, italics, strike through, cell border styles, conditional formatting, etc. There are plenty of formatting tools in Excel. What are you not able to accomplish with those that you can accomplish with 9 font faces?

fsckboy 2y ago
>don’t use 9 different fonts. You have ... font size, bold, underline, italics so, what you are calling "fonts" (Arial, Times) are actually called "typefaces" every pointsize in a typeface is a new font, and bold and italics the same. so, we don't know if Excel is making the same common/casual error you are, but if their error message is "technically correct (the best kind of correct)", then italics and bold in each pointsize are all separate fonts, and that's what he might have too many of.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  you can be very pedantic about it, but Excel has no problem with 8+ variations of font size, color, and formatting, and everyone outside of typeface designers and newspaper men references typefaces as "the font".
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Excel also has no problem with more than a dozen typefaces, with one size/style of each (I just tested it.) The error message is probably using “fonts” in the technically correct sense for combinations of typeface, size, and style, while the user experiencing the error is probably confused and reporting that they are only using 8 “fonts” using the term to mean typefaces (which is how Excel itself uses the term in the UI, with the typeface selector using the label “Fonts”.) But if you are using 8 typefaces, using multiple sizes and styles of each, you can easily be using over 100 actual fonts.
  - fsckboy 2y ago

leptons 2y ago

I can't imagine the use case for having more than 1 font in a spreadsheet. Please elaborate. I'm pretty sure Excel is the wrong tool for whatever job you are throwing at it.

skeeter2020 2y ago
Maybe a title, and perhaps some callout cells? but more than 8? I'm stretching to find a use case requiring 3 or 4.
jen729w 2y ago
> I'm pretty sure Excel is the wrong tool for whatever job you are throwing at it. Thanks, you completed my bingo card.
kichimi 2y ago
I feel like this is a pretty important thing for the technically minded to get their heads around. Doesn't the fact that you can't imagine a single reason why youd want multiple fonts on a spreadsheet alarm you?
- leptons 2y ago
  Excel is for spreadsheets, 9+ fonts is not really a common use case for a spreadsheet. It sounds like OP is trying to do graphic design in Excel, but we'll probably never find out.
fragmede 2y ago
You're pretty sure it's the wrong tool, but you can't imagine a use case for a fairly basic feature of said tool? Why do I now doubt your assertion?
- leptons 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - 2y ago

fuzzfactor 2y ago

Try it with more memory and/or larger swapfile space on your drive. It might be OK until 8 specialty fonts need to be reproduced beyond a certain number of cells. If more memory was all it takes to fix, that would be good to know.