8 ms·

The truly irreplaceable product is Excel. It is fraught with quirky bugs and limitations and odd conventions (how many people actually end up storing dates bef

The truly irreplaceable product is Excel. It is fraught with quirky bugs and limitations and odd conventions (how many people actually end up storing dates before the magic February 29 1900?), yet no alternative can hold a candle to Excel. On the other hand, there are solid alternatives to the other products in the office suite

toomuchtodo 13y ago
How much would it take to replace Excel with an open source alternative? $100K? $1MM? There has to be a dollar amount where you can buy enough developer time to replace it.
- comicjk 13y ago
  $100K is one developer-year... I would expect it to cost at least a hundred times that.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    In the US. You can find developers, good developers, for cheaper than that outside of major metro areas in the US, Europe, etc.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Little factors of 2-3x are not the issue here. It's the ten years with a thousand developers that really drive the cost.
- nonchalance 13y ago
  LO and other openoffice suites are progeny of StarOffice, originally released in 1985. Even with such a long development history, there are deep compatibility issues which make it unacceptable for the "power users" that comprise the most profitable segment of the market. And if you really want to go down that rabbit hole of perfect compatibility, it's an absolute clusterf*ck. There are more than than 20 different 100+ page specs (some exceeding 500 pages) needed to properly parse excel files. An incomplete list (which you can find by searching for the keyword): MS-XLS, MS-CFB, MS-ODRAW, MS-ODRAWXML, MS-OGRAPH, MS-OFFCRYPTO, MS-RMPR, MS-OVBA, MS-OSHARED, MS-CTXLS, ECMA-376, MS-OLEDS, MS-OLEPS, MS-DTYP, MS-XLSB, MS-OFORMS, MS-VBAL, MS-OAUT, MS-DCOM, MS-XLSX But if you are looking to contribute to an open source project, consider some of these reasonably active projects (I'm sure I am missing some really good libraries here, so don't consider this a comprehensive list): https://github.com/tealeg/xlsx https://github.com/tealeg/xlsx (go, xlsx read) https://poi.apache.org/ https://poi.apache.org/ (java) https://github.com/Niggler/js-xlsx https://github.com/Niggler/js-xlsx (javascript, xlsx read) https://github.com/Niggler/js-xls https://github.com/Niggler/js-xls (javascript, xls read) https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/ https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/ (php) http://www.python-excel.org/ http://www.python-excel.org/ (python, based on openoffice ) https://github.com/randym/axlsx https://github.com/randym/axlsx (ruby, xlsx write) https://github.com/seamusabshere/remote_table https://github.com/seamusabshere/remote_table (ruby, xls/xlsx read)
  - jebblue 13y ago
    >> But if you are looking to contribute to an open source project, consider some of these reasonably active projects Anything I've ever needed any of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice tools to do have worked fine. I don't think it does anyone service to suggest to projects which keep the proprietary Microsoft Office suite alive.
    - nonchalance 13y ago
      To successfully replace the office suite, in the beginning you must be able to interact with office files. Joel Spolsky (member of the office development team) attributed their success to this: > Microsoft Office ended up beating its competitors because it was able to read and write to file formats other than its own. For example, Excel was able to read files from Lotus, and was able to save the file without losing any information. The important lesson in order to gain market share was that in order for new users to try Microsoft Excel, they had to be able to work with the files their coworkers were creating. > Lesson: You don’t want your customers to feel locked into using your software. It helps with sales cycles because customers know that they can switch away if they so choose. While customers will be willing to try your product, they think two steps ahead. They want to ensure they can easily migrate to a new system. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on-software-on-both-sides-of-the-table/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on-sof...
- ksk 13y ago
  And what happens when you do? Pay them again to keep maintaining the code base? Problem is few products can find a sustainable business model around open source.
- yen223 13y ago
  However much it cost Microsoft to build Excel.
  - tanzam75 13y ago
    > However much it cost Microsoft to build Excel. More than that, because you have to replicate a lot of Excel's idiosyncracies in order to get compatibility. That's a very challenging task. When Microsoft was putting Lotus 1-2-3 compatibility into Excel back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, this was a much smaller task than replicating Excel would be today. Lotus 1-2-3 was a much less complex product. Most people were upgrading from 1-2-3 v2.x to Excel, which meant that Excel really only had to be compatible with a product that was originally hand-written in x86 assembly.
- emiliobumachar 13y ago
  See this for an idea of the complexity of that task: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html (I realise I'm not answering you. I'm bad at estimates)
- oblio 13y ago
  To have something objectively better - 100% compatibility with Excel + major limitations and bugs fixed + cross platform - more like tens of billions of dollars. Excel is 28 years old and for its entire lifetime it has been one of the focal points of Microsoft development. It is also the center of one of the biggest cottage industries in the software world + servers as an SDK for probably hundreds of thousands of in-house developers. I think such an effort is just an order of magnitude smaller than replacing Windows on desktop systems. And that's saying a lot about Excel :)
- roel_v 13y ago
  "How much would it take to replace Excel with an open source alternative? $100K?" That is one full time developer for a year, not counting any project management etc. If we say that so far, there has been spend 1000 man years on Open/Libre Office (I'm just making that number up, it has been under development for decades and probably with more than 20 devs working on it, so it's probably more, but let's say 1000, and not even count all the project management / user feedback / documentation work etc); then still you're saying that bringing Libre Office to the level of MS Office is within 0.1 resp 1 % of completion. I hope I don't need to argue how that is prima facie nonsense.
wfunction 13y ago
> there are solid alternatives to the other products in the office suite Are you sure? Does it not strike you as odd that OpenOffice/LibreOffice still haven't managed to replace Word?
- brymaster 13y ago
  I really think that has to do with Microsoft's lock-in strategy and the fact that people only "know" Office in the corporate space.
  - serge2k 13y ago
    Or maybe, just maybe, it could be that word is actually a market leader in terms of features and interface.
    - normloman 13y ago
      Have you ever been involved in buying software for a company? In my experience, nobody compares the features of different word processing software. In fact, nobody even mentions competing software, as if Word was the only choice.
      - oblio 13y ago
        Now they don't. But they did in the 80s and 90s and guess what, Office won, because it was the best choice. And it's not like they didn't have commercial competitors who couldn't keep up with Microsoft bribes^Wlobbying :)
    - brymaster 13y ago
      Nonsense, we're talking about a word processor here and Office/Word has been heavily criticized for it's interface and incremental features (or lack of reasons to upgrade) in each release. Features? 99% of the time you're either writing a letter/resume, reading some lengthy terms and conditions doc or reading someone else's resume. Office/Word is what they learn in school (lock-in strategy) and Office/Word is what corporate apathy and only "knowing" MS software leads to in the workplace. You work somewhere, you use Office. Period.
xarien 13y ago
I absolutely agree. And while I hate VBA, it makes excel that much more powerful. It even makes up for some of the bugs in excel such as absolute references from a different workbook doesn't transpose using the built in transpose function. However, using the built in copy / paste formula functionality, it works fine. In this case, a simple macro which takes 5 mins to write will resolve this otherwise annoying bug. Although the most annoying thing about Excel is actually the users who insist on using it like a database...
pasbesoin 13y ago
It's been over a decade since I was a regular, daily Excel user ("power user", frankly). I still, today, haven't seen anything that matches what Excel was already back then. It has its quirks. It's also damned powerful and optimized. (I guess that's including its program-ability and the ability to interface it with external functionality via Win32 et al. I remember, for example, referencing IE 4, then 5, in order to "add" regex's to it via VBA scripting. Actually, as I recall that was actually Windows Scripting Host; installing the relevant version of IE at that time in turn caused WSH to also be installed.) P.S. I was not number crunching during the Lotus heydays. I gather its products had some features that were unparalleled for their time and that Excel may never have fully matched. P.P.S. As for quirks, I remember one bit of oddity emanating from a formatting function that an older programmer associated with a Fortran convention, when I happened to describe it to him.
- e12e 13y ago
  It's a shame the "scheme in a grid"-project apparently is dead: http://siag.nu/ http://siag.nu/ (At least it's not trivial to get it to compile on a modern Linux distro as far as I can tell...). Not that it's really a replacement for excel for all users, but it was an interesting package.
- nawitus 13y ago
  What are the limitations of OpenOffice Calc compared to Excel and 10 year old Excel?
  - CrLf 13y ago
    Don't know how OO Calc compares to Excel today, but I stopped using it after having an unfixed issue(1) open for a few years that made it impossible to produce a simple line graph with more than about 2000 points without slowing down the program to a halt, whereas Excel didn't even break a sweat. These are the limitations of Excel alternatives. They look nice on the outside, but fail to understand that users don't use them just for the simple stuff. It is well known that Excel is what really powers many companies, and these are often absurdly complex. (1) OO Calc insisted on drawing an x-axis label for every single point in a graph, on every redraw.
mtraven 13y ago
How many other software products have entire groups and conferences dedicated to tracking and mitigating the problems they cause? http://www.eusprig.org/ http://www.eusprig.org/
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Linux? (http://events.linuxfoundation.org/ http://events.linuxfoundation.org/) EDA tools? (http://www.dac.com/ http://www.dac.com/) Having problems is not the operative issue. It's userbase. All software has problems; Excel is one of the projects that has a large enough userbase that you can schedule conferences about its problems. P.S. "EDA" is of course more than one tool, but it's close to the right scope and what jumps to mind right now.
  - serge2k 13y ago
    Every open source project large enough to have a community that cares?
sliverstorm 13y ago
Outlook may not be irreplaceable, but from what I've seen nobody has come close to making its replacement.
- nonchalance 13y ago
  It's really difficult to say whether the replacement for outlook will be a piece of software for the desktop, a web-based solution a la gmail/google calendar, or a powerful iPhone/android/bb app
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Big Corp doesn't want its trade secrets on Google's servers, and phones don't have enough interface real estate to contain the full functionality. They work best as satellite devices, in my experience.
    - eitally 13y ago
      Big corps like these: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.html http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.htm... ? As a user in a mixed MS Office + Google Apps + LibreOffice environment, Google's recent work with QuickOffice has been EXTREMELY helpful. My big gripe isn't Excel so much, either, but people who refuse to abandon PowerPoint when all they need to do is create a bullet list.
      - asdasf 13y ago
        >Big corps like these: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.htm.. http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.htm.... ? No, not at all like those. Big corps like these: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2013/full_list/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2013/full_... When someone says "big corp" they do not mean "Jason's Deli".
      - walshemj 13y ago
        All those examples seem to be SME's or lifestyle companies a really big corp may well employ more developers than Google has employees.
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
> The truly irreplaceable product is Excel. I’m by no means an Excel power user, but Apple Numbers provides everything I need in a spreadsheet app. I have native Numbers apps on my laptop, desktop, tablet, and phone (but there’s also a web app). Whenever I save a file on one device, it’s automatically added to all the others. A file created on my laptop can be edited on my phone and vice versa. Also, Apple Numbers imports and exports Excel documents. As a result, I haven’t opened Excel in over a year and I doubt I’ll ever buy another upgrade. Excel may not be replaceable for everyone, especially if you’re using it in a corporate setting, but for me, I have found I can easily do without. I find Apple Numbers to be way more user-friendly and convenient.
- MAGZine 13y ago
  So Numbers is a good, platform-locked spreadsheet editor for simple uses? Dropbox+Excel seems like it would do the same thing, but even with more flexibility (including version control, document sharing) and supporting even more platforms. I don't think you can ever consider spreadsheet software to be 'user friendly'. They're spreadsheets.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    > Numbers is a good, platform-locked spreadsheet editor for simple uses? Numbers is not just a spreadsheet editor, it’s a full-fledged spreadsheet creator. Its features are sufficient for all but the most demanding users. > Dropbox+Excel seems like it would do the same thing For me, it doesn’t. Just using Dropbox and my stock OS (and providing I don’t use Numbers), I can view Excel files on my phone and tablet but I cann’t create or edit them. I still need to use a third party app and Microsoft doesn’t have an appealing Excel offering for mobile platforms. > even with more flexibility (including version control, document sharing) Numbers has version control and document sharing. > supporting even more platforms. Numbers is available as native apps for iOS media players, phones, and tablets. There’s also a native app for OS X. For Windows, Linux, and every other platform that can run a modern web browser, there’s a very capable web app, available for free. Excel is available as native app for Windows and OS X. For Windows Phone it has a very bare-bones app, the Android and iOS versions are a disgrace. > I don't think you can ever consider spreadsheet software to be 'user friendly'. Maybe you should try Numbers, especially on a mobile device, and then compare it to Excel.
qwerta 13y ago
I know many people who happily left Excel behind. Each localized version stored function names as localized strings!!! So format was not even compatible across the same version.
- akx 13y ago
  Except that the formulas actually get saved in a tokenized form, without the original names, no matter what localization they're in, in the file... https://github.com/python-excel/xlrd/blob/master/xlrd/formula.py https://github.com/python-excel/xlrd/blob/master/xlrd/formul...
tracker1 13y ago
I would say that Outlook is probably the most unique in the office suite, though feel it really should be spun off and bundled with Exchange again, which is where it really shines. Outlook + Lync are a pretty impressive combination. Word, Excel, Powerpoint all have viable alternatives in LibreOffice. I also really like OneNote as well. The biggest reason I don't use the MS products more, is that I happen to run Mac, Windows and Linux regularly on my different computers. More of my development work is now targeting Linux than Windows, which leaves me less tied to it. I'd also like to see the Office org split out, and let free to target non-MS platforms more.. would love a better Office solution for Android. And, I'm sure iPad users would appreciate it too.
pjmorris 13y ago
I'm inclined to believe you're right. I once worked in a large actuarial shop that did a great deal of its own custom software (they had over 100 developers). Excel was the primary tool used by the actuaries.
SeanDav 13y ago
Excel is a seriously powerful tool, it is quite frankly amazing what can be done in Excel. I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousands of lines of VBA code, controlling systems that trade hundreds of millions of USD. If Excel stopped working today, by tomorrow the stock markets would likely be in a blood bath, such is the ubiquitousness of Excel in that field.
- kfk 13y ago
  I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousands of lines of VBA code Having worked with some VBA myself, this sounds like a very, very, scary statement.
  - davidgerard 13y ago
    It is a scary statement, and it is true, and I have friends who write VBA handling millions of pounds, and they concur that you and I should be scared.
- Perseids 13y ago
  It is also amazing what can be done programming in brainfuck. That something is powerful enough to do the job does not mean that it is a good tool to do the job.
  - SeanDav 13y ago
    Excel is used extensively in the financial and trading fields because for many situations (predominantly RAD and prototyping) it IS the best tool for the job. We are talking about companies with serious amounts of cash to throw around at anything that gives them the slightest edge and with some of the smartest people to work for them. They use Excel because for many situations there is nothing better. Of course the particular use case I mentioned was probably pushing Excel right to the edge of the envelope and the company was actively developing a .NET replacement for it because everyone recognized this. I have no idea how that turned out but I can say that the Excel system was very impressive and very functional.
- 13y ago
hrktb 13y ago
So true. Excel can now be seen as some sort of platform rather just some number handling software. There is a real lock in when hundreds to thousands of lines of scripting and data bindings have been written to manage often critical parts of someone's business. I wonder if there will ever be a shift to a future incarnation of hypercard, or some other mainstream oriented 'programming' platform that would displace Excel.
genwin 13y ago
Yes, it has quirks! Yet I'll choose Excel over Word when I have a choice (e.g. lists, things in tables). Word is generally frustrating. Excel is generally a good experience.
Gormo 13y ago
> how many people actually end up storing dates before the magic February 29 1900? Anyone engaging in any sort of historical research?

toomuchtodo 13y ago

How much would it take to replace Excel with an open source alternative? $100K? $1MM? There has to be a dollar amount where you can buy enough developer time to replace it.

comicjk 13y ago
$100K is one developer-year... I would expect it to cost at least a hundred times that.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  In the US. You can find developers, good developers, for cheaper than that outside of major metro areas in the US, Europe, etc.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Little factors of 2-3x are not the issue here. It's the ten years with a thousand developers that really drive the cost.
nonchalance 13y ago
LO and other openoffice suites are progeny of StarOffice, originally released in 1985. Even with such a long development history, there are deep compatibility issues which make it unacceptable for the "power users" that comprise the most profitable segment of the market. And if you really want to go down that rabbit hole of perfect compatibility, it's an absolute clusterf*ck. There are more than than 20 different 100+ page specs (some exceeding 500 pages) needed to properly parse excel files. An incomplete list (which you can find by searching for the keyword): MS-XLS, MS-CFB, MS-ODRAW, MS-ODRAWXML, MS-OGRAPH, MS-OFFCRYPTO, MS-RMPR, MS-OVBA, MS-OSHARED, MS-CTXLS, ECMA-376, MS-OLEDS, MS-OLEPS, MS-DTYP, MS-XLSB, MS-OFORMS, MS-VBAL, MS-OAUT, MS-DCOM, MS-XLSX But if you are looking to contribute to an open source project, consider some of these reasonably active projects (I'm sure I am missing some really good libraries here, so don't consider this a comprehensive list): https://github.com/tealeg/xlsx https://github.com/tealeg/xlsx (go, xlsx read) https://poi.apache.org/ https://poi.apache.org/ (java) https://github.com/Niggler/js-xlsx https://github.com/Niggler/js-xlsx (javascript, xlsx read) https://github.com/Niggler/js-xls https://github.com/Niggler/js-xls (javascript, xls read) https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/ https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/ (php) http://www.python-excel.org/ http://www.python-excel.org/ (python, based on openoffice ) https://github.com/randym/axlsx https://github.com/randym/axlsx (ruby, xlsx write) https://github.com/seamusabshere/remote_table https://github.com/seamusabshere/remote_table (ruby, xls/xlsx read)
- jebblue 13y ago
  >> But if you are looking to contribute to an open source project, consider some of these reasonably active projects Anything I've ever needed any of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice tools to do have worked fine. I don't think it does anyone service to suggest to projects which keep the proprietary Microsoft Office suite alive.
  - nonchalance 13y ago
    To successfully replace the office suite, in the beginning you must be able to interact with office files. Joel Spolsky (member of the office development team) attributed their success to this: > Microsoft Office ended up beating its competitors because it was able to read and write to file formats other than its own. For example, Excel was able to read files from Lotus, and was able to save the file without losing any information. The important lesson in order to gain market share was that in order for new users to try Microsoft Excel, they had to be able to work with the files their coworkers were creating. > Lesson: You don’t want your customers to feel locked into using your software. It helps with sales cycles because customers know that they can switch away if they so choose. While customers will be willing to try your product, they think two steps ahead. They want to ensure they can easily migrate to a new system. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on-software-on-both-sides-of-the-table/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on-sof...
ksk 13y ago
And what happens when you do? Pay them again to keep maintaining the code base? Problem is few products can find a sustainable business model around open source.
yen223 13y ago
However much it cost Microsoft to build Excel.
- tanzam75 13y ago
  > However much it cost Microsoft to build Excel. More than that, because you have to replicate a lot of Excel's idiosyncracies in order to get compatibility. That's a very challenging task. When Microsoft was putting Lotus 1-2-3 compatibility into Excel back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, this was a much smaller task than replicating Excel would be today. Lotus 1-2-3 was a much less complex product. Most people were upgrading from 1-2-3 v2.x to Excel, which meant that Excel really only had to be compatible with a product that was originally hand-written in x86 assembly.
emiliobumachar 13y ago
See this for an idea of the complexity of that task: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html (I realise I'm not answering you. I'm bad at estimates)
oblio 13y ago
To have something objectively better - 100% compatibility with Excel + major limitations and bugs fixed + cross platform - more like tens of billions of dollars. Excel is 28 years old and for its entire lifetime it has been one of the focal points of Microsoft development. It is also the center of one of the biggest cottage industries in the software world + servers as an SDK for probably hundreds of thousands of in-house developers. I think such an effort is just an order of magnitude smaller than replacing Windows on desktop systems. And that's saying a lot about Excel :)
roel_v 13y ago
"How much would it take to replace Excel with an open source alternative? $100K?" That is one full time developer for a year, not counting any project management etc. If we say that so far, there has been spend 1000 man years on Open/Libre Office (I'm just making that number up, it has been under development for decades and probably with more than 20 devs working on it, so it's probably more, but let's say 1000, and not even count all the project management / user feedback / documentation work etc); then still you're saying that bringing Libre Office to the level of MS Office is within 0.1 resp 1 % of completion. I hope I don't need to argue how that is prima facie nonsense.

wfunction 13y ago

> there are solid alternatives to the other products in the office suite Are you sure? Does it not strike you as odd that OpenOffice/LibreOffice still haven't managed to replace Word?

brymaster 13y ago
I really think that has to do with Microsoft's lock-in strategy and the fact that people only "know" Office in the corporate space.
- serge2k 13y ago
  Or maybe, just maybe, it could be that word is actually a market leader in terms of features and interface.
  - normloman 13y ago
    Have you ever been involved in buying software for a company? In my experience, nobody compares the features of different word processing software. In fact, nobody even mentions competing software, as if Word was the only choice.
    - oblio 13y ago
      Now they don't. But they did in the 80s and 90s and guess what, Office won, because it was the best choice. And it's not like they didn't have commercial competitors who couldn't keep up with Microsoft bribes^Wlobbying :)
  - brymaster 13y ago
    Nonsense, we're talking about a word processor here and Office/Word has been heavily criticized for it's interface and incremental features (or lack of reasons to upgrade) in each release. Features? 99% of the time you're either writing a letter/resume, reading some lengthy terms and conditions doc or reading someone else's resume. Office/Word is what they learn in school (lock-in strategy) and Office/Word is what corporate apathy and only "knowing" MS software leads to in the workplace. You work somewhere, you use Office. Period.

xarien 13y ago

I absolutely agree. And while I hate VBA, it makes excel that much more powerful. It even makes up for some of the bugs in excel such as absolute references from a different workbook doesn't transpose using the built in transpose function. However, using the built in copy / paste formula functionality, it works fine. In this case, a simple macro which takes 5 mins to write will resolve this otherwise annoying bug. Although the most annoying thing about Excel is actually the users who insist on using it like a database...

pasbesoin 13y ago

It's been over a decade since I was a regular, daily Excel user ("power user", frankly). I still, today, haven't seen anything that matches what Excel was already back then. It has its quirks. It's also damned powerful and optimized. (I guess that's including its program-ability and the ability to interface it with external functionality via Win32 et al. I remember, for example, referencing IE 4, then 5, in order to "add" regex's to it via VBA scripting. Actually, as I recall that was actually Windows Scripting Host; installing the relevant version of IE at that time in turn caused WSH to also be installed.) P.S. I was not number crunching during the Lotus heydays. I gather its products had some features that were unparalleled for their time and that Excel may never have fully matched. P.P.S. As for quirks, I remember one bit of oddity emanating from a formatting function that an older programmer associated with a Fortran convention, when I happened to describe it to him.

e12e 13y ago
It's a shame the "scheme in a grid"-project apparently is dead: http://siag.nu/ http://siag.nu/ (At least it's not trivial to get it to compile on a modern Linux distro as far as I can tell...). Not that it's really a replacement for excel for all users, but it was an interesting package.
nawitus 13y ago
What are the limitations of OpenOffice Calc compared to Excel and 10 year old Excel?
- CrLf 13y ago
  Don't know how OO Calc compares to Excel today, but I stopped using it after having an unfixed issue(1) open for a few years that made it impossible to produce a simple line graph with more than about 2000 points without slowing down the program to a halt, whereas Excel didn't even break a sweat. These are the limitations of Excel alternatives. They look nice on the outside, but fail to understand that users don't use them just for the simple stuff. It is well known that Excel is what really powers many companies, and these are often absurdly complex. (1) OO Calc insisted on drawing an x-axis label for every single point in a graph, on every redraw.

mtraven 13y ago

How many other software products have entire groups and conferences dedicated to tracking and mitigating the problems they cause? http://www.eusprig.org/ http://www.eusprig.org/

sliverstorm 13y ago
Linux? (http://events.linuxfoundation.org/ http://events.linuxfoundation.org/) EDA tools? (http://www.dac.com/ http://www.dac.com/) Having problems is not the operative issue. It's userbase. All software has problems; Excel is one of the projects that has a large enough userbase that you can schedule conferences about its problems. P.S. "EDA" is of course more than one tool, but it's close to the right scope and what jumps to mind right now.
- serge2k 13y ago
  Every open source project large enough to have a community that cares?

sliverstorm 13y ago

Outlook may not be irreplaceable, but from what I've seen nobody has come close to making its replacement.

nonchalance 13y ago
It's really difficult to say whether the replacement for outlook will be a piece of software for the desktop, a web-based solution a la gmail/google calendar, or a powerful iPhone/android/bb app
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Big Corp doesn't want its trade secrets on Google's servers, and phones don't have enough interface real estate to contain the full functionality. They work best as satellite devices, in my experience.
  - eitally 13y ago
    Big corps like these: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.html http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.htm... ? As a user in a mixed MS Office + Google Apps + LibreOffice environment, Google's recent work with QuickOffice has been EXTREMELY helpful. My big gripe isn't Excel so much, either, but people who refuse to abandon PowerPoint when all they need to do is create a bullet list.
    - asdasf 13y ago
      >Big corps like these: http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.htm.. http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.htm.... ? No, not at all like those. Big corps like these: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2013/full_list/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2013/full_... When someone says "big corp" they do not mean "Jason's Deli".
    - walshemj 13y ago
      All those examples seem to be SME's or lifestyle companies a really big corp may well employ more developers than Google has employees.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago

> The truly irreplaceable product is Excel. I’m by no means an Excel power user, but Apple Numbers provides everything I need in a spreadsheet app. I have native Numbers apps on my laptop, desktop, tablet, and phone (but there’s also a web app). Whenever I save a file on one device, it’s automatically added to all the others. A file created on my laptop can be edited on my phone and vice versa. Also, Apple Numbers imports and exports Excel documents. As a result, I haven’t opened Excel in over a year and I doubt I’ll ever buy another upgrade. Excel may not be replaceable for everyone, especially if you’re using it in a corporate setting, but for me, I have found I can easily do without. I find Apple Numbers to be way more user-friendly and convenient.

MAGZine 13y ago
So Numbers is a good, platform-locked spreadsheet editor for simple uses? Dropbox+Excel seems like it would do the same thing, but even with more flexibility (including version control, document sharing) and supporting even more platforms. I don't think you can ever consider spreadsheet software to be 'user friendly'. They're spreadsheets.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  > Numbers is a good, platform-locked spreadsheet editor for simple uses? Numbers is not just a spreadsheet editor, it’s a full-fledged spreadsheet creator. Its features are sufficient for all but the most demanding users. > Dropbox+Excel seems like it would do the same thing For me, it doesn’t. Just using Dropbox and my stock OS (and providing I don’t use Numbers), I can view Excel files on my phone and tablet but I cann’t create or edit them. I still need to use a third party app and Microsoft doesn’t have an appealing Excel offering for mobile platforms. > even with more flexibility (including version control, document sharing) Numbers has version control and document sharing. > supporting even more platforms. Numbers is available as native apps for iOS media players, phones, and tablets. There’s also a native app for OS X. For Windows, Linux, and every other platform that can run a modern web browser, there’s a very capable web app, available for free. Excel is available as native app for Windows and OS X. For Windows Phone it has a very bare-bones app, the Android and iOS versions are a disgrace. > I don't think you can ever consider spreadsheet software to be 'user friendly'. Maybe you should try Numbers, especially on a mobile device, and then compare it to Excel.

qwerta 13y ago

I know many people who happily left Excel behind. Each localized version stored function names as localized strings!!! So format was not even compatible across the same version.

akx 13y ago
Except that the formulas actually get saved in a tokenized form, without the original names, no matter what localization they're in, in the file... https://github.com/python-excel/xlrd/blob/master/xlrd/formula.py https://github.com/python-excel/xlrd/blob/master/xlrd/formul...

tracker1 13y ago

I would say that Outlook is probably the most unique in the office suite, though feel it really should be spun off and bundled with Exchange again, which is where it really shines. Outlook + Lync are a pretty impressive combination. Word, Excel, Powerpoint all have viable alternatives in LibreOffice. I also really like OneNote as well. The biggest reason I don't use the MS products more, is that I happen to run Mac, Windows and Linux regularly on my different computers. More of my development work is now targeting Linux than Windows, which leaves me less tied to it. I'd also like to see the Office org split out, and let free to target non-MS platforms more.. would love a better Office solution for Android. And, I'm sure iPad users would appreciate it too.

pjmorris 13y ago

I'm inclined to believe you're right. I once worked in a large actuarial shop that did a great deal of its own custom software (they had over 100 developers). Excel was the primary tool used by the actuaries.

SeanDav 13y ago

Excel is a seriously powerful tool, it is quite frankly amazing what can be done in Excel. I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousands of lines of VBA code, controlling systems that trade hundreds of millions of USD. If Excel stopped working today, by tomorrow the stock markets would likely be in a blood bath, such is the ubiquitousness of Excel in that field.

kfk 13y ago
I have worked with Excel-based trading systems with tens of thousands of lines of VBA code Having worked with some VBA myself, this sounds like a very, very, scary statement.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  It is a scary statement, and it is true, and I have friends who write VBA handling millions of pounds, and they concur that you and I should be scared.
Perseids 13y ago
It is also amazing what can be done programming in brainfuck. That something is powerful enough to do the job does not mean that it is a good tool to do the job.
- SeanDav 13y ago
  Excel is used extensively in the financial and trading fields because for many situations (predominantly RAD and prototyping) it IS the best tool for the job. We are talking about companies with serious amounts of cash to throw around at anything that gives them the slightest edge and with some of the smartest people to work for them. They use Excel because for many situations there is nothing better. Of course the particular use case I mentioned was probably pushing Excel right to the edge of the envelope and the company was actively developing a .NET replacement for it because everyone recognized this. I have no idea how that turned out but I can say that the Excel system was very impressive and very functional.
13y ago

hrktb 13y ago

So true. Excel can now be seen as some sort of platform rather just some number handling software. There is a real lock in when hundreds to thousands of lines of scripting and data bindings have been written to manage often critical parts of someone's business. I wonder if there will ever be a shift to a future incarnation of hypercard, or some other mainstream oriented 'programming' platform that would displace Excel.

genwin 13y ago

Yes, it has quirks! Yet I'll choose Excel over Word when I have a choice (e.g. lists, things in tables). Word is generally frustrating. Excel is generally a good experience.

Gormo 13y ago

> how many people actually end up storing dates before the magic February 29 1900? Anyone engaging in any sort of historical research?