this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 294 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (17 children)

It depends on how long you use it:

Year 1: Ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?

Year 2: How is it still fucking breaking?

Year 3: I just don't fucking care why it keeps breaking. I think I hate this program.

Year 4: I hate this program

Year 5: Let the hate flow through you, consume you. Feel the dark side flowing through your fingertips. Yes. Good. Why is it breaking? It's the end users. Yes... they've been plotting against you from the beginning - hiding columns, erasing formulas and even...

merging cells

Que heavy breathing through a respirator.

Year 6: It's a board meeting. They ask you if you can average all the moving averages of average sales per month and provide an exponential trendline to forecast growth on five million rows of data.

You say "sure, boss, I can knock that for you in Excel in about an hour or two."

Your team leader interjects "I believe what he was trying to say was we'll use Tableau and it will take about a month."

You turn to him with a steely glare.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

Year 7: Your team leader is gone after you pointed out he fucked up one of your sheets that run the business by merging a cell. All data flows through you and the holy spreadsheet, and the board is terrified of firing you because no one knows how your sheets work but you and their entire inventory system would collapse if you leave.

But then the inevitable happens. Dissension in the ranks. The juniors talk of python, R, Tableau, Power BI - anything to release your dark hold upon the holy data. You could crush them all with a xlookup chain faster than they can type a SELECT statement. The Rebellion is coming, but you're ready. You've discovered the Data Model, capable of building a relational database behind the hidden moons of Power Pivot, parsing tens of millions of rows - and your Death Star is almost complete.

You're ready to unleash your dark fury when the fucking spreadsheet breaks again.

Year 8: New company. They ask if you know Excel. You just start cackling with a addictive gleam in your eye as tears start streaming down your face.

They hire you on the spot.

All they use is Excel. And Access.

You think, ok, this is kinda cool, but why does it keep fucking breaking?

[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 68 points 1 month ago

We need a /c/MuseumOfLemmy to preserve this treasure in so that it may be cherished and studied by our children and our children’s children and many generations beyond.

[–] whostosay@lemmy.world 27 points 1 month ago

This is art

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago

Year 7: Your team leader is gone after you pointed out he fucked up one of your sheets that run the business by merging a cell.

I am laughing about how after 7 years nobody has locked the sheets that run the business to avoid this specific thing.

Or maybe they were kocked and the team leader unlocked it so they could break it without saving a backup.

[–] feannag@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

There's no way they're using xlookup at year 7. You can pry my index match from my cold dead hands.

[–] xpinchx@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Xlookup works fine for like 90% of cases, I save index match mainly for when I need to return multiple lookup values. In which case I load into BI because I always forget how index match works 😫

[–] feannag@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I should probably learn how BI works, but I'm mostly torturing excel to do things it was never intended to do.

Also I do a lot of lookups and xlookup will slow my sheet down.

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[–] mmddmm@lemm.ee 16 points 1 month ago

Why isn't that "Merge Cells" button hidden behind 3 levels of menus up to this day?

[–] xpinchx@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Damn you just described my role but everything happened within a span of 3 years

[–] MelonYellow@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

The ending was great. Nice payoff.

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[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 49 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I've done things in excel that are an abomination in the eyes of the divine.

I have absolutely 0 regret.

[–] Godnroc@lemmy.world 32 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You have January 1, 1970 regret?

[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

Or false regret, either or.

[–] admin@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Generate localization strings in all requested languages with the "translate" macro without proof checking because you don't speak Finnish or Japanese?

[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Worse - pulling data from a web page, then using the power of pure jank to parse this input, and then invoking a sheet of reference string builders to construct formulae and execute them using too damn many @indirects nested into vlookups before finally adding in date aware data reveals, because no excel abomination is complete without trying to parse dates.

[–] admin@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Shit man, I'm sure there's an xkcd for that.

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[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago

...I feel seen.

[–] The_v@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Fucking hell, I understood that. I have slipped and fallen into the dark side. Learn from my mistakes and turn back before you get to this point. There is no hope for me now.

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[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 48 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Excel is a hammer.

When holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Stop using Excel for anything more than simple data extraction and pivot tables, get a custom solution tailored to your needs rather than a monstrous Excel document that consumes 14 GB of RAM to run.

[–] bfg9k@lemmy.world 37 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We support a financial institution that uses ~30MB Excel sheets with thousands of calculations and they wonder why they can't send it via email or why it has issues when 10 people edit it at once

Just use a goddamn database

[–] ArtVandelay@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago

MyExcelDB powers thousands of institutions daily

[–] Randelung@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

The bad thing is, they've attached a mediocre screwdriver to the hammer because everybody keeps using the hammer as a screwdriver. But now, everybody STILL uses the hammer as a screwdriver. The screwdriver part used to be a separate tool, but people didn't know how to use it, and now they still don't, even though it comes with instructions.

They really should have kept things separate.

[–] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Got it.

use it as calculator

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"It's not as good as making games in as Unity or Unreal but I can manage."

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[–] lnxtx@feddit.nl 17 points 1 month ago

"Excel" 365 🤮

[–] Caffeinated_Sloth@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (4 children)

What if I like it? Is there something wrong with me?

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 31 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Not at all. You just haven't gotten deep enough into the beast to see the horror.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But what about those of us in R1C1 mode using lambdas to do recursive cell operations across data pulled from multiple sheets? Am I anywhere near the kinda of Eldritch horrors discussed? I've also written indirect references based on Sheet name to populate filters from web scraped tables. I just don't know how deep the pit goes at this point.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I will give it to you, when it works, it does some magical stuff. But try designing such complex things that are miracles in coding and then it have to run on a half-ass computer. I want to say terminal, it's not that, but it's those small fake computers that companies seem to think are better to get than an actual desktop because they're cheap. I know that's hardware, not Excel, but Excel does not run well on that, so...

Or worse, you get moved to 365 which doesn't do most scripting and breaks all that was working. That cloud shit is a problem.

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[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

You are probably using it for its intended purpose, which it Excels at.

[–] AreaSIX@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

I think it's one of my all time favorites. I think people here live in the tech literate bubble who know how to use specialized software for the different things excel does, albeit clunkily. But average people are intimidated by those more advanced tools, and there are a lot of average people in decision making positions who benefit greatly from being able to use excel.

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[–] DarkCloud@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (9 children)

The Libre Office Suite is better, and Free Open Source Software (FOSS).

[–] siha@feddit.uk 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Libreoffice calc is pretty hurrendous tbh

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago

It's ok if you use it for simple things. Simple arithmetic

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I prefer Grist

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Create a table in Libre Office, I'll wait...

(Hint,the devs have flat out stated they will never add tables to Calc, as it's wrong to do).

99% of Excel usage includes a table in the first, or second, sheet. Without tables a spreadsheet app is useless, in my opinion, regardless of how "wrong" it is (and I agree that it's wrong).

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[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

ooh thats me and databases.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Databases are just Excel with extra steps

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Databases are excel in four dimensions.

[–] MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 month ago

Excel is the database. Excel is the status console. Excel is the web scraper. Excel is the data analyzer.

All hail the mighty Spreadsheet, let us VBA. 🙏

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[–] bappity@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I did a GCSE course on Excel, I learned to get irrationally angry every time a class was scheduled

[–] pfwood178@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My brain didn't see GCSE at first, instead it saw CSGO and was both confused and intrigued.

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[–] qaz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

I have been using Grist a lot and it has been working quite well. I don't like Python that much, but it's a lot better than the functions in Excell.

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