• stoy@lemmy.zip
    6·
    2 years ago

    IT guy here, Excel is a data analytics tool, not a database, not a word processor, not a sales system, not a photo album, not a notepad, not a paint program.

    If at anytime you are treating Excel as a database, you are doing it wrong, and you deserve me mocking you when asking for help recovering it when it breaks, I won’t as I am not a dick, but if I did, you would deserve it.

    If you want a database, build an SQL database, or have someone build it for you, not me.

    • Samsy@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      The problem is, people dig to deep into excel functions, some of them could easily build a database or do some programming (if/else), but they know nothing outside of their ms-office -ecosystem.

      Just a hint for ms-office devs, why not a low-code-builder with SQL backend. Just call it squirrel or powersql or something.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
      02·
      2 years ago

      It’s not even a good analytics tool. If you submit an academic paper with excel plots in it, I’ll reject that shit without reading it and type “lmaoooooooo…” To the review character limit.

      My 12 year old child knows how to use matplotlib and he thinks Santa can fit down a chimney.

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
        2·
        2 years ago

        It is good enough for financial and marketing analytics, just because there are better tools for scientific applications doesn’t make Excel a bad analytic tool for general use.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
    6·
    2 years ago

    Me, being scolded for using ipynb notebooks to deliver rapid feature turnaround to customers, generating a million dollars in revenue:

    Our finance department, tracking that revenue in a 700MB excel spreadsheet which is version controlled by a 13 year old email thread:

  • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    Didn’t the UK’s covid track and trace system break because it was running on excel

  • saigot@lemmy.ca
    5·
    2 years ago

    When I was in high-school I made an inventory management/pos for my school’s merch shop. It was the single worst thing I made and how I discovered what feature creep was. Got me a course credit though!

  • msbeta1421@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 years ago

    My take is that Excel is great for people to throw together quick and efficient tools for their own use. The problem is when these get distributed and then everyone uses something that has no version control or QA/QC.

    I see this a lot because an engineer gets annoyed with IT or existing software restrictions and learns enough VBA to be dangerous. (Spoiler, it me.)

  • ChanchoManco@lemm.ee
    4·
    2 years ago

    On one of my last jobs they required us to do a straightforward but time consuming task with excel, it was ideal to automate it in software but my manager won’t ask the dev team because he said it would be very expensive and they were focused on more important things. I did it with macros on excel and word and kept it to me and my coworker, so we had like two hours of free time everyday, only had to look like we were busy with the sheet.

    • gmtom@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      And asset management software and internal program GUI and collaborative coding software and even (in one case) version control.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    2 years ago

    My job where we run a bunch of programs that are actually VB style interfaces with an excel backend loading data from a huge database… Opening the two that we need for everyday tasks uses 10gigs of ram…

  • Samsy@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 years ago

    I saw a presentation in excel once, I want sum it up here, but it was pointless.

  • KISSmyOS@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 years ago

    Put that Excel sheet in Onedrive and you have a networked accounting software solution with rights management.

  • marighost@lemm.ee
    2·
    2 years ago

    At my old job, they had an HR person that was not qualified to be an HR person, and she “accidentally” sent an Excel spreadsheet of everyone’s wages and salaries to the entire company email distro.

    1. She was not fired, but put on a suspension.
    2. Don’t know why she had an unsecured Excel file of important information like that.
    3. Everyone was pissed lol
    • kennismigrant@feddit.nl
      6·
      2 years ago

      Everyone was pissed

      as someone who had worked in transparent jurisdictions: everyone should absolutely be pissed about not having this info available publicly always in real time.

      • marighost@lemm.ee
        01·
        2 years ago

        I wouldn’t call her a hero. She was wildly incompetent, and screwed up half of the employees’ tax info. I was a single filer with no dependants, but she had me down for married with 4 dependants. She also lost all the forms, so I couldn’t prove I messed up my W2s (or whatever those forms are).

    • Pyr@lemmy.ca
      11·
      2 years ago

      I personally got an Excel sheet emailed to me from HR when I asked how much vacation time I had left.

      She didn’t remove the sheets for everyone else though, so I was able to see how much vacation time and sick hours people all had accrued.

      The one guy everyone was always pissed at for never being at work of course had like 3 hours of sick time accrued while everyone else had around 200-400 hours (it was union). He used every hour of sick time he accrued whether he was sick or not and let everyone else pick up his slack.

        • Pyr@lemmy.ca
          01·
          2 years ago

          When you have as much sick time as we were able to accrue it was there for emergencies like not being able to work for a month due to a surgery or something. Not taking a month off every year for the hell of it.

          Sure we could take mental health days and personal days and sick days easily whenever people were very understanding and encouraged it. That one employee very much abused it though and it was no secret. People like that are why most employers are stingy with sick time as they can’t be trusted to be responsible with it.

          If you only get 5 days of sick leave every year sure go ahead and make sure you use that, but we weren’t in that situation. This employee basically took every second Friday off, and in a job where you can’t just put off your work until the next day someone else had to do your work on top of their own that day.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
      0·
      2 years ago

      Excel has one purpose, data analytics, but as it is a very powerful tool in that regard, with loads of flexible features, people tend to use it in ways that will work for a surprisingly long time, before completely failing.

      A common example is to build a database in Excel, say a product catalog with all features and pricing listen in dynamic fields, then someone writes a custom macro to interface the database with external systems, and as new employees join more code is written to make the database easier to update and edit, then more systems are brought in to interface with the database, more data is added, say materials needed in production to build said products, and time calculations to findout how long the different products will take to make, and what product you can make with what you have in inventory, and more macros and integrations.

      And it keeps going, but Excel has a hard limit on how much data a sheet can contain, and with all of the new features and integrations it will just be a matter of time untill a new update from Microsoft breaks critical functionallity.

      And as the Excel database is used for more and more stuff, it becommes more and more dangerous to the company, at the end you will have an unmaintainable mess that is kept alive on a Windows XP VM running MS Office 2003, since that is the latest system that can run the database with all integrations

      A proper SQL database is far more efficient robust, and customizable, but require more indepth knowledge about programming.

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
          1·
          2 years ago

          Then you only get the raw data, not macros or integrations, some of which might be more important to the company than data from a specific point in time.

      • freebee@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        2 years ago

        True, but unless still using .xls instead of .xlsx chances of reaching the row limit on a sheet became rather small, even for very large companies. Many issues with the everything in excel hell, but the row limit isn’t a main one (anymore).