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Hopefully, advanced users are using features like merges, automation of data sources, templates and address validations rather than WordArt and gradients. With
by rz2k 13y ago
Hopefully, advanced users are using features like merges, automation of data sources, templates and address validations rather than WordArt and gradients.
With minimal studying on their own, a smart office worker can be pretty efficient doing analysis with Excel Pivot Tables while avoiding a lot of red tape. I could see the switch to an office suite with reduced features getting in the way of work done by a lot of behind the scenes, unsung heroes.
I think that when actual exposure to how people use software is largely comes from support calls, it is easy to get an inaccurate picture of bumbling and general incompetence, rather than creative solutions to often arbitrary constraints on their tool sets.
- mpyne 13y agoI'm not a help desk. I'm using the same software these other people are using in an environment swamped with office documents. We write memoranda and instructions, we make PowerPoint briefings, we use scads and scads of spreadsheets, and although I personally use and admire PivotTables, most don't. Even the famous "Access database that underlies the operation" is very rarely to be found around here. The only thing I've ever seen an Access database behind around here (besides the ones I personally use) are for FITREP processing in the Navy. Perhaps surprisingly, much of the stuff you'd use "advanced spreadsheets as database" for end up being run by actual databases with website frontends around here, which makes office software even less essential; just make the ad-hoc query on the web page and export to Excel and you're done.