6 ms·

Why would anyone use Excel now?

by jonthn 13y ago

cobrausn 13y ago
Maybe because not everyone wants their spreadsheet with sensitive data on Google's servers. Also, I seriously doubt this thing is up to feature parity with Excel.
- g8oz 13y ago
  As far as desktop clients go, what does Excel have that Gnumeric or LibreOffice Calc don't? Not including inertia.
localhost 13y ago
Because Excel is the backbone of how most organizations do "computation". For example, if you look at any financial services company, you will find not only Excel everywhere, but tons of VBA code in those spreadsheets which also turn around and talk to various compute clusters that they use (both Windows HPC server and LOTS of Linux). Excel isn't going away anytime soon.
bigchewy 13y ago
power users. it's faster and has shortcuts that everyone has memorized.
uptown 13y ago
privacy
bjg 13y ago
Well, there's power pivot[0]. [0] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/powerpivot.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/powerpivot.aspx
antr 13y ago
having worked at a multinational for some years where excel was the bread and butter: privacy, power features (e.g. tables, goal seek, etc), and custom-built (corporate) plugins are the three biggest reasons I can think off.
joezydeco 13y ago
I've worked with one organization that uses Excel sheets to model product mathematics for gaming (gambling) equipment. They won't even use the Macintosh version of Excel since they can't be sure the math will come out exactly the same as the PC version, and the PC version is what has gotten them approved by the gaming boards before. Call it superstitious, but they don't have the time or expense to sit there and prove that another spreadsheet works 100.00% identally to PC Excel. So now they run Excel in VMWare on OSX. There's irony there, but what can you do?
- selectodude 13y ago
  Most people I know who sit in Excel all day use Windows Excel on a Mac. OS X is a better platform (it's nice to have the terminal right there) but Mac Excel is trash, and Microsoft knows it.

Why would anyone use Excel now?

by jonthn 13y ago

Why would anyone use Excel now?

Maybe because not everyone wants their spreadsheet with sensitive data on Google's servers. Also, I seriously doubt this thing is up to feature parity with Excel.

g8oz 13y ago
As far as desktop clients go, what does Excel have that Gnumeric or LibreOffice Calc don't? Not including inertia.

localhost 13y ago

Because Excel is the backbone of how most organizations do "computation". For example, if you look at any financial services company, you will find not only Excel everywhere, but tons of VBA code in those spreadsheets which also turn around and talk to various compute clusters that they use (both Windows HPC server and LOTS of Linux). Excel isn't going away anytime soon.

bigchewy 13y ago

power users. it's faster and has shortcuts that everyone has memorized.

uptown 13y ago

privacy

bjg 13y ago

Well, there's power pivot[0]. [0] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/powerpivot.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/powerpivot.aspx

antr 13y ago

having worked at a multinational for some years where excel was the bread and butter: privacy, power features (e.g. tables, goal seek, etc), and custom-built (corporate) plugins are the three biggest reasons I can think off.

joezydeco 13y ago

I've worked with one organization that uses Excel sheets to model product mathematics for gaming (gambling) equipment. They won't even use the Macintosh version of Excel since they can't be sure the math will come out exactly the same as the PC version, and the PC version is what has gotten them approved by the gaming boards before. Call it superstitious, but they don't have the time or expense to sit there and prove that another spreadsheet works 100.00% identally to PC Excel. So now they run Excel in VMWare on OSX. There's irony there, but what can you do?

selectodude 13y ago
Most people I know who sit in Excel all day use Windows Excel on a Mac. OS X is a better platform (it's nice to have the terminal right there) but Mac Excel is trash, and Microsoft knows it.