Could The World Cope Without Ms Excel?

[ToraToraTora]

We often have movie plots around armaggeddon either natural or by some Bond style Villain but I think we have become so dependent on the omni useful MS Excel that where it to be suddenly taken away world wide, we'd suffer an armagedon every bit as serious as those in the movies. I work for a bank and we would collapse over night without it! So dependent are all from CEO to Mrs Mop! Has software become so vital? How would we cope without it?

[Buenchico]

I HATE Excel!!!

I particularly dislike the way that many people use it when other software (such as Access) would be far better for the relevant task.

[tamborine]

An interview with IR recommended accounts be done on ledgers for submission to them. As I use excel (they claimed not to have the software) I have to print out accounts for IR audit.

[ToraToraTora]

Yes chris misuse is common but I like it for what it is good for.

[Mosaic]

Access!? Chris?
OMG, no nonono.
Access reminds me of the wonderful world of computers in the 1980s - impenetrable, boring and pointless.
At least in excel I can make a sequential list just by dragging - wheeee!
Or add up a row
Or even use formulae
And even make a cell go pink when it reaches 26
All sorts of useful stuff.

Tora, ask not the question about excel - ask it about computers in general. We're seriously screwed without them as nobody can add up a row of numbers in their head anymore.

[Prudie]

I absolutely hate Excel but the Finance team at work find it almost orgasmic!

[Retrochic]

I remember doing our profit/loss accounts by hand in a huge book. Excel saves me hours ,nay,weeks of work. Its when it goes wrong (like this afternoon) it causes mayhem and you realise how much you rely on it.

[ToraToraTora]

great so the IR would function!

[Calibax]

Very true Mosaic. Or should that be =TRUE()

[Psybbo]

Yes Prudie, I agree with them.

[ToraToraTora]

yes mosaic, I take your point but that's a whole genre, I'm talking about meltdown from the absence of just 1 program. You want to see the palaver and hissy fits I see when some MF generated Excel sheet is late or absent!

[Buenchico]

Advanced uses of Excel often seem to depend upon someone within the organisation having specialist knowledge.

When I worked on the railways, and had to book taxis for customers left stranded by operational problems, we had to enter all of the information (such as the name of the taxi driver, the journey undertaken and the reason for using a taxi) onto an Excel spreadsheet. Then, as if by magic, that was converted into a form (which looked like an order form, rather than a spreadsheet) to give to the driver. At the end of each day we then had to email our updated spreadsheet through to the accounts department.

Unfortunately a simple keying error (such as leaving a field blank or using the incorrect type of input) was enough to get Excel to throw a wobbly, when it would then refuse to print the latest form and simply 'lock up' completely.

Given that I (or one of my colleagues) would typically be trying to enter the data into Excel while simultaneously answering four phones, handling radio messages, dealing with a dozen taxi drivers (all waiting for their paperwork), trying to placate twenty irate passengers and still despatching trains efficiently, errors weren't exactly uncommon! (Therefore irate taxi drivers, doubly-irate customers and panicking station supervisors weren't exactly uncommon either!).

We repeatedly referred the Excel problems back to head office, only to be told "Sorry, the woman who created the spreadsheet and its associated forms has left the company and nobody else knows enough about Excel to fix it!"

Grrr!

[ToraToraTora]

RTFM chris??

[tamborine]

Most excel data can transpose to Word

[New Judge]

Quite agree with 'Chico (about Access vs Excel) - up to a point.

Access does loads of things far more efficiently than Excel, but the same is so vice-versa. I have written many "data mining" routines involving many hundreds of thousands of records with dozens of fields. Used Acces to filter, manipulate and process this data in ways that Excel simply could not handle (in fact the first problem would be the numbers of recods involved). But Excel, IMHO is far better for presentations, reports, charts and the like. So, use Access to process your data then use Excel to show the results to your board. (Board members like nice pictures, charts and words not exceeding two syllables. They get confused otherwise!) Macros in both can ease the tasks.

[ToraToraTora]

yes tambo but only pictorially, the sheet wont work after that. Judge, we use Mainframe power to extract and summarise data into CSV form and transmit to windows servers for literally thousands of reports etc every day.

[New Judge]

Fine if you're doing so on an industrial scale, 3Ts.

I had the task of providing "ad hoc" reports, as and when required. These required a flexible tool (or tools) to produce stuff in fairly quick order. In my experience, writing mainframe routines (certainly in the outfit I was working for at the time) required about a year's notice.

[jno]

never used it, so I'd probably get by, along with a few survivalists living in caves in Oregon.

[Buenchico]

I worked with a manager who seemed determined to do as much as possible using only PowerPoint. So her letters were written using PowerPoint, her notices on the board were prepared using PowerPoint, staff rosters were drawn up using PowerPoint, etc, etc

I often wondered whether someone had forgotten to put Word onto her computer ;-)

[Old_Geezer]

There were spreadsheets before Microsoft muscled in; there will be spreadsheets or something similar when MS are long gone.

One could cope without such software but transactions would slow to a crawl and umpteen more accountant types would be needed to check everything in triplicate. We have created the tools to help, there is no point in not using them. Not much different to creating any other tool type really.

[beso]

Office applications do different tasks so I think Chris is a bit unfair hating Excel because some people use it when they should use Access. Some people hate Access for the same reason.