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Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools
Graeme Williams writes "Beginning Excel What-If Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver makes it easy to learn about some neat features of Excel, including the four data-analysis tools mentioned in the title. I found the book useful, but the style is dry and unadorned, and others may find it less approachable than I did. The examples around which the book is built are clear and straightforward rather than insightful, and presented plainly rather than with a lot of discussion." Read the rest of Graeme's review.
Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver
author
Paul Cornell
pages
xxii + 167
publisher
Apress
rating
7
reviewer
Graeme Williams
ISBN
1-59059-591-2
summary
A clear but bare introduction to a useful set of Excel tools
This book reads and feels more like a textbook than an introduction. Other beginner books are full of diagrams, icons and text in boxes. This book has almost none of that – the occasional tip or note is set off with horizontal lines. In other books, text in boxes often seems to be put there for no reason at all, but this book has exactly one diagram. Comparing this book to others, I feel as though we've lost the middle way.
The book seems to go out of its way to avoid diagrams. To fill out a dialog box, for example, the instructions are to click on the first field, type in the value, click on the second field, type in the value, and so on. I just don't understand why you wouldn't put in a screen shot, with the instructions, "Make it look like this". I don't know if screen shots weren't used because they're more expensive, or harder to translate, but if so, a table could have achieved a similar result.
Goal Seek is a simple one-variable equation solver. You put x in one cell and f(x) in another. You point Goal Seek at the two cells, give it a value of c and it attempts to solve f(x) = c. It's a simple enough feature, and the book goes through a number of straightforward examples.
The examples are relevant and clearly explained, but they seem only to be examples of themselves. They don't trigger any new ideas, and none of them jump out at you as "Neat!". I wish the author had put a little more creativity into the examples. They seem a little dry and occasionally repetitive, and don't seem to build on one another. An example shouldn't be just, "Here it is", but rather, "Here's something important to know about how it works" or "Here's an idea you can use in other places as well as here".
At the end of each chapter, there's a list of possible errors, but the suggested fixes aren't all equally helpful. If Goal Seek can't solve f(x) = c, the book suggests (page 19) changing the value of c! This is an area where a set of related examples would have been very helpful: first showing a simple example, followed by a more complicated example that fails, and finally with the failure repaired.
Data Tables are a way to automatically generate a one- or two-dimensional tables of values, given a formula and one or two sets of values. The book shows how to build data tables, going through a number of good examples, but I was somewhat mystified why this would be better than doing the same thing by hand. Building a data table by hand means you have to understand the difference between A1, $A1, A$1 and $A$1, which I guess is one reason for using the automatic mechanism. A1 and $A$1 are referred to as relative and absolute references, in case you want to google this particular mystery. But building a table by hand gives you more control over the layout. Unfortunately Microsoft has made the layout of two-dimensional data tables both odd and inflexible (the formula for the table is stuck in the upper left corner). It would have been clearer if the book had explained that the examples looked the way they did because that was the only way they could look. It would also have been useful if the book had at least briefly compared data tables to the manual equivalent.
Scenarios allow you to store versions of a spreadsheet that have different input values. This is neater than it sounds, since you can vary any number of input variables and calculate any number of output variables, including charts. You can also generate a summary sheet which tabulates the corresponding inputs and outputs. The book explains all this very well, going from a clear explanation to three good examples.
Any book with code samples risks confusion about whether the reader should type in the examples or download them, but this book crosses the line. In some examples (the most egregious example is on page 51), the discussion assumes that some cells have defined names, something that would only have been possible if the reader downloaded the example, since names were not included in the step-by-step instructions. The odd thing is that in some of the examples, the instructions DO include the defined name for each cell.
When presenting Excel examples like these, you have to deal with the possibility that a cell will have three pertinent properties: a formula, a value, and a name. This is another case where the book seems to lack a good designer who could show this graphically.
The Solver is a general-purpose equation solver that will handle multiple variables and multiple constraints. For a given function f(x1, ..., xn), the solver can either solve for f(...) = c, or maximize f(...). The book explains how to set this up, and the meaning of the dozen or so options (tolerance, maximum iterations, and so on) pretty clearly.
The Solver provides a sensitivity report (how much the result will change if one of the inputs changes fractionally), but this report is disabled if even one of the variables is restricted to whole numbers. There are two obvious ways around this: run the sensitivity analysis as though the constraint wasn't there (which would provide the counter-factual information about how much the solution would change if the whole number value changed fractionally); or run the sensitivity analysis without the restricted variables. Microsoft doesn't provide either of these workarounds, and the book doesn't discuss them either.
The sensitivity report is disabled if any variable has either an "integer" or "binary" constraint, but the book repeatedly mentions only integer constraints, which could be confusing to a beginner. It doesn't help that Microsoft gives the same error message ("Sensitivity Report and Limits Report are not meaningful for problems with integer constraints") for both cases.
The appendices are quite good – I'd almost recommend reading the book backwards. There's an overview of the data and financial analysis functions in Excel, such as average, median, floor, ceiling and mortgage payment, with enough detail to lead you to the right part of Microsoft's documentation. Another appendix describes ways of handling data that aren't discussed in the body of the book, such as Lists, Subtotals, sorting, filtering and consolidating data. These extras add a considerable amount to the usefulness of the book.
At $34.95 list, the book is expensive for an introductory book, but I'm not sure that should count against it. If you use the techniques described in the book, the time you'll save will quickly pay back the cost. On the other hand, if you need more explanation and discussion than the book provides, it's going to seem like a whole lot of money. I strongly recommend downloading the sample chapter. It will give you an excellent view of the book's strengths and weaknesses."
You can purchase Beginning Excel What-If Data Analysis Tools from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This book reads and feels more like a textbook than an introduction. Other beginner books are full of diagrams, icons and text in boxes. This book has almost none of that – the occasional tip or note is set off with horizontal lines. In other books, text in boxes often seems to be put there for no reason at all, but this book has exactly one diagram. Comparing this book to others, I feel as though we've lost the middle way.
The book seems to go out of its way to avoid diagrams. To fill out a dialog box, for example, the instructions are to click on the first field, type in the value, click on the second field, type in the value, and so on. I just don't understand why you wouldn't put in a screen shot, with the instructions, "Make it look like this". I don't know if screen shots weren't used because they're more expensive, or harder to translate, but if so, a table could have achieved a similar result.
Goal Seek is a simple one-variable equation solver. You put x in one cell and f(x) in another. You point Goal Seek at the two cells, give it a value of c and it attempts to solve f(x) = c. It's a simple enough feature, and the book goes through a number of straightforward examples.
The examples are relevant and clearly explained, but they seem only to be examples of themselves. They don't trigger any new ideas, and none of them jump out at you as "Neat!". I wish the author had put a little more creativity into the examples. They seem a little dry and occasionally repetitive, and don't seem to build on one another. An example shouldn't be just, "Here it is", but rather, "Here's something important to know about how it works" or "Here's an idea you can use in other places as well as here".
At the end of each chapter, there's a list of possible errors, but the suggested fixes aren't all equally helpful. If Goal Seek can't solve f(x) = c, the book suggests (page 19) changing the value of c! This is an area where a set of related examples would have been very helpful: first showing a simple example, followed by a more complicated example that fails, and finally with the failure repaired.
Data Tables are a way to automatically generate a one- or two-dimensional tables of values, given a formula and one or two sets of values. The book shows how to build data tables, going through a number of good examples, but I was somewhat mystified why this would be better than doing the same thing by hand. Building a data table by hand means you have to understand the difference between A1, $A1, A$1 and $A$1, which I guess is one reason for using the automatic mechanism. A1 and $A$1 are referred to as relative and absolute references, in case you want to google this particular mystery. But building a table by hand gives you more control over the layout. Unfortunately Microsoft has made the layout of two-dimensional data tables both odd and inflexible (the formula for the table is stuck in the upper left corner). It would have been clearer if the book had explained that the examples looked the way they did because that was the only way they could look. It would also have been useful if the book had at least briefly compared data tables to the manual equivalent.
Scenarios allow you to store versions of a spreadsheet that have different input values. This is neater than it sounds, since you can vary any number of input variables and calculate any number of output variables, including charts. You can also generate a summary sheet which tabulates the corresponding inputs and outputs. The book explains all this very well, going from a clear explanation to three good examples.
Any book with code samples risks confusion about whether the reader should type in the examples or download them, but this book crosses the line. In some examples (the most egregious example is on page 51), the discussion assumes that some cells have defined names, something that would only have been possible if the reader downloaded the example, since names were not included in the step-by-step instructions. The odd thing is that in some of the examples, the instructions DO include the defined name for each cell.
When presenting Excel examples like these, you have to deal with the possibility that a cell will have three pertinent properties: a formula, a value, and a name. This is another case where the book seems to lack a good designer who could show this graphically.
The Solver is a general-purpose equation solver that will handle multiple variables and multiple constraints. For a given function f(x1, ..., xn), the solver can either solve for f(...) = c, or maximize f(...). The book explains how to set this up, and the meaning of the dozen or so options (tolerance, maximum iterations, and so on) pretty clearly.
The Solver provides a sensitivity report (how much the result will change if one of the inputs changes fractionally), but this report is disabled if even one of the variables is restricted to whole numbers. There are two obvious ways around this: run the sensitivity analysis as though the constraint wasn't there (which would provide the counter-factual information about how much the solution would change if the whole number value changed fractionally); or run the sensitivity analysis without the restricted variables. Microsoft doesn't provide either of these workarounds, and the book doesn't discuss them either.
The sensitivity report is disabled if any variable has either an "integer" or "binary" constraint, but the book repeatedly mentions only integer constraints, which could be confusing to a beginner. It doesn't help that Microsoft gives the same error message ("Sensitivity Report and Limits Report are not meaningful for problems with integer constraints") for both cases.
The appendices are quite good – I'd almost recommend reading the book backwards. There's an overview of the data and financial analysis functions in Excel, such as average, median, floor, ceiling and mortgage payment, with enough detail to lead you to the right part of Microsoft's documentation. Another appendix describes ways of handling data that aren't discussed in the body of the book, such as Lists, Subtotals, sorting, filtering and consolidating data. These extras add a considerable amount to the usefulness of the book.
At $34.95 list, the book is expensive for an introductory book, but I'm not sure that should count against it. If you use the techniques described in the book, the time you'll save will quickly pay back the cost. On the other hand, if you need more explanation and discussion than the book provides, it's going to seem like a whole lot of money. I strongly recommend downloading the sample chapter. It will give you an excellent view of the book's strengths and weaknesses."
You can purchase Beginning Excel What-If Data Analysis Tools from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
... once Excel switches to open document formats, I'll switch to opening documents about it.
Until then, I'm probably not going to pick up this book.
My work here is dung.
To fit that title on the cover.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Excel? Has this site become "News for Accountants, Figures that matter"???
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
a) It's slashdot, it's not "the world."
b) As a nerd, slashdot is one of the few places I can voice my angst and fustration
c) Said angst and frustration is actually understood here
d) I want people to know that I want an open document format and I want them to want it also
My work here is dung.
As much as it is in fashion to bash Microsoft, I must say they did a very good job with Excel. No matter how well you think you know the program, you most likely have more to learn. So many times I've had people ask me how to do something in Excel/VBA and I tell them, "Don't use VBA - that feature is already built into Excel". So, before you DIY try reading up on some of the features of Excel.
As I side note, I use to teach Excel to an adult student who just didn't "get" some of the concepts. Every session he would ask me, "what's this I-F function for again?" He didn't even get that it was the IF function and not the I-F function as if I and F were letters of an acronym. Let me tell you, that was frustrating every class.
Bradley Holt
The appendices are quite good. I'd almost recommend reading the book backwards.
.ehcadaeh a em evag tsuj ti tub ,ecno taht deirt I wonk uoY
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I imagine a good bit of the book is taken up by repetition of the title:
In Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver we're going to show you how to use some of Excel's What-if Data Analysis Tools. Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver is written with the beginner in mind, but if you are coming to Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver as an intermediate user, we have something for you. Even if you are coming to Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver as an advanced user, we believe that you will come away with something useful. So let's get started with Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver.
P.S.
I had a lot of fun writing Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools: Getting Started with Goal Seek, Data Tables, Scenarios, and Solver, and I hope you have as much fun reading it.
Calc sucks. You can't do a tenth of the stuff you can do in Excel in Calc. And I'm not even talking about VBA scripting. Sure, you can make a table with your friends names, their screen names, their favorite colors and their girl friends, but try doing some hardcore data analysis and you will be left dead in the water.
its a good post-analysis tool for looking at data sets and drawing some conclusions. Like monte carlo analysis and stuff.
Or a stand-alone simulation, when a fullup C++ program is overkill but you can't quite do it on your calculator... (or sliderule for those of you a few years older than me)
Can it handle more than 65K records yet?
How about field limitations?
It couldn't even handle a small dataset the last time I tried it.
This is entirely true. The pivottable equivalent (datapilot) is very flaky, often erasing sheet areas, and the graph options even are awful.
As much as I have tried to use Calc, I need some of the power of Excel.
"Excel? Has this site become "News for Accountants, Figures that matter"???"
Not as long as we belive everything should be free.
I'd be interested to know how much of what is covered in this book is also supported by Calc. While I realize that this book is about Excel I am also interested to know how portable the knowledge I would gleen from it is.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Having used Excel for over a dozen years, I'm still saddened by how few folks use it for more than a poor man's database. Even basic mathematical tasks - making a budget, figuring out the total cost of a purchase - escape most people. The features covered in the book are truly powerful, but probably too complex for over 90% of Excel's userbase.
I was a software trainer for five years and I ran into many adult students whose lack of math skills kept them from using many of Excel's features. Now, for students without college degrees, I didn't assume too many math skills. However, even folks with four-year degrees would shock me. One time as I was showing students how to use the Auto-Sum tool, one student asked me if there was an "auto-percent" tool.
I was puzzled, "Do you mean formatting percentages? We'll cover that later in the class".
"No, my boss asked me to add up some numbers and then show the percent each one is of the total. Is there a tool for that?"
"Um, you mean the division operator?" I then proceeded to show her how she could divide the individual numbers against the total to get their share of the total. It wasn't a bad question, since it let me show the rest of the class how to combine formulas (which they had learned earlier) and functions. The scary thing is that the student had just graduated that past spring with a degree in finance.
"but try doing some hardcore data analysis and you will be left dead in the water."
People who do "hardcore data analysis" will not be using a spreadsheet anyway.
What if Excel didn't implement its own window manager and actually allowed one to view two windows side by side in the fashion one has already learned? What if Excel allowed one to save to a folder with a "[" in the name, which Windows happily allows one to create? What if Excel didn't have math errors (or so the Gnumeric people claim). What if Excel had a dynamic transpose function? What if Excel had used MEAN() instead of AVERAGE()?
Once you learn how to use pivot tables, your entire perspective on Excel changes from "Word with Gridlines" to poor man's database.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
if he did, he would understand why the "workarounds" he proposes to perform a sensitivity analysis of an integer programming problem are meaningless.
take a look at The Science of Decision Making: A Problem-based Approach Using Excel by Eric Denardo if you are serious about doing data analysis with Excel.
People who do "hardcore data analysis" will not be using a spreadsheet anyway.
At its price point Excel makes a good post-processing data analysis tool. Its no matlab but its several thousand dollars cheaper.
Now, I know this is a joke... Still, have you ever used Excel in, say, French? The formula will not be =AVERAGE(A1:A10). No, it will be =MOYENNE(A1:A10). It makes it hell to find what functions you want. I can cope with multilingual menus, but multilingual functions are impossible.
Note that the functions are compatible: AVERAGE will show MOYENNE when opening it in a French Excel. Luckily... ;-) Oh, and OpenOffice replicates this behaviour. Very annoying, but I suppose that it's good for the end-users.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
This is slashdot, there can be nothing useful or beneficial about any of Microsoft's products.
I work in semiconductor design, and a boss of mine 15 years ago used to simulate state machines in Excel. Each row was a clock cycle, each column was a state variable, and each cell was the contained the logic. There are of course many state machine design tools, but for quick discussions he could prove a lot of points in meetings just with Excel.
Yeah, pivot tables are great. But what's also handy and AFAIK pretty new is the easy ability to make quick lists from your spreadsheets. Adding a list creates filter options at the top and gives you a totals row at the bottom. It's like pivot tables lite and it's great for sorting through data quickly.
I do time tracking in Excel and it's simple to select one customer or one project with the lists and see a total of hours for the week.
At my last two companies I've been the first in my group to do any sort of pivot based reporting. Between the ability to drill down and swap criteria on the fly, I get all sorts of awed looks and positive comments.
This usually leads me to run a couple of informal classes for the department, which, in the end frees up my time since everyone is busy doing their own analysis...meaning I can spend my time on more important stuff, like Slashdot.
Thinking of starting a business in Minnesota? Me too! mnsmall.biz
Have a look at ROOT. It is an object oriented data analysis framework with a C++ interpreter. It provides you with very powerful tools for doing all kinds of plotting (histograms and stuff), doing fits to data and storing data (so called ROOT files), etc... In addition to that it is free software (the latest version is licensed under the LGPL). It may not seem as easy to use as Matlab, but in the end I think ROOT is a lot more powerful.
On the other hand most secretaries and people like that would not find writing C++ scripts all that fun...
Try this in a calculator: 2+2*2. Every dipshit knows that 2+2 = 4, and then 4 * 2 is 8.
Now type it in Excel and it gives you 6!
Both in my corporate and graduate academic career, Excel is the most frequently used tool for data analysis. Not necessarily the most powerful, but likely the easiest and most flexible tool for most analysis applications.
Thinking of starting a business in Minnesota? Me too! mnsmall.biz
What I'd really like to see is books and courses on how to use OpenOffice, GIMP, LaTeX, Blender and other FOSS programs.
Let people know they don't need to depend on proprietary software.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Agreed - Pivot Tables are great - but don't forget the function: Getpivotdata. I've been entire applicatons that store data in pivot tables and then use GetPivotData to populate a template. GetPivotData, done right, can even take input from drop down boxes and such without any VBA. It's a handy way to create a nice user interface in Excel without a lot of work. Use the contact form on my website and I'll create and send a sample workbook.
blenderking.com over 50,000 blenders can't be wrong
...is to replace every instance of "Excel" in your post with "women". Seriously.
It's called operator precedence. Look it up. Seriously.
As an engineer, I hate it when people use Excel for data analysis. It's a financial spreadsheet tool, and it's awful for anything else. Skip it, learn Matlab, and you'll never look back. Otherwise, you'll only cause others headaches when you hand them your "program" in Excel.
The fact that Excel has a 65,535 row limit is an indicator that even Microsoft doesn't expect it to be used for real analysis.
"Beginning Excel". Instead use Open Office, Koffice or Gnumeric.
The End.
+1 pointing out hyperbole
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
2+2*2 is indeed 6...believe it or not. And while yes, every "dipshit" does "know" that 2+2*2=8, I would venture to guess that a small percentage of the population (those with at least a 5th grade understanding of arithmetics) would recognise that Excel is simply implementing standard order of operations. It's complicated, but it breaks down like this:
:-D
2+2*2 = 2+4 (perform multiplication first)
2+4 = 6 (perform addition last)
I personally don't use MS Office or Windows, I try not to give them my business willingly...however, in the spirit of fairness, I just checked my OpenOffice Calc and yes, it agrees "=2+2*2" is equal to 6. Oh geesh, I guess someone should file a bug report.
(I hope this isn't taken as a flame, I'm just poking a little fun.)
The nerves are pretty sensitive right now, there is a huge movement to make sure discussions are on-topic etc -- which I agree, need consideration so that /. doesn't just become a tech-centered fark.
/. without valid, on-topic reasons is going to get modded down -- regardless of intent.
But any post that looks like it's impugning
As one sig I recall said, "One man's (+5, Funny) is another man's (-1, Troll)."
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
One man's (+5, Funny) is another man's (-1, Troll)
So true... I have seen this indeed in a sig a long time ago. Dunno if the guy is still around. Well, at least you won't take it personal now, and you know that I hold accountants in high esteem.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Just because you can solve your problem in a spreadsheet doesn't mean you should. At best they are a convenient way of doing simple non-recursive calculations on a dataset. At worst they are a really non-portable way of making your algorithm incomprehensible to anyone else.
Save yourself some money by buying the book here: Beginning Excel What-if Data Analysis Tools. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
Forget Excel, and definitely forget C++; check out Octave, SciPy, or Perl if you want tools for data analysis. Matlab if you have some funds.
Excel is indeed an awesome product. I never really appreciated it (or knew much about it, frankly) until I started studying finance. Now its pretty indispensable. Speaking of goalseek, I was looking at a GNU-licensed product called Maxima, which performs a similar function. Anyone have any experience with that?
"If we cannot be free, then at least we can be cheap" -- Frank Zappa
To the -1 Troll mod: It's a joke, retard
"What if Excel didn't implement its own window manager and actually allowed one to view two windows side by side in the fashion one has already learned?"
What if Users could find the "Window|Compare Side by Side" command?
"What if Excel allowed one to save to a folder with a "[" in the name, which Windows happily allows one to create?"
You know that square brackets have a special use in Excel, right?
"What if Excel had a dynamic transpose function?"
There is Edit|Paste Special|Transpose. I can only guess you were looking for more.
"What if Excel had used MEAN() instead of AVERAGE()?"
Then there'd be no need for overly picky users to write their own MEAN() function in order to save three keystrokes; what fun would that be? (You know you can write your own functions, right?)
a really funny joke, too.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
As a database developer, I have come across organizations countless times that are using excel as a database. They keep some list, with lots of visual formatting, which they send around in emails, which they then end up with dozens of different versions of. Someone gets the bright idea to put the file on a file server so lots of people can open it at once, but that doesn't seem to work right! THEN when it truly gets out of hand, I get a call. Can you help us? Can I just shoot myself, it will be quicker and less painful. I have seen people keeping inventory, invoices, correspondence logs, etc. in excel. Why not put it in a database? It obviously needs to be shared. Data should be kept as close as possible in ONE place, and when edited it should propagate immediately to all users. This is why databases are useful. After having been confronted with these kinds of messes over and over, I have developed a (perhaps unfounded) hatred of excel. It really does have its place, and in its place it is a wonderful tool. Very few people seem to understand what that place is. The power that it really possesses rarely seems to get used either.
If you're trying to work with datasets larger than 65k lines you may want to check out Kirix Strata.
-Handles 60 Billion records
-Spreadsheet-like viewing of data from relational databases (drag in fields from related tables)
-Really, really fast
-Runs on Linux
Currently there's a 30-day evaluation version
Graduate academic career in what area?
This review is pretty negative towards the book. Every paragraph mentions something the reviewer didn't like, even the price seemed steep.
But it gets a 7? On what scale is this? 7/100?
-David
Agreed. Now, how many opensource spreadsheets apps out there support this? I know that openoffice supports it, but sucks badly when there is a huge ammount (eg: from a database query) of data to handle while excel makes it instantaneous. Last time I checked, KSpread didn't have it, neither GNumeric.
sign(c14n(envelop(this)), x509)
use the right tool for the job.
I recently was tasked with building a tracking document for work. I need to be able to track progress on thousands of files, and be able to view large portions of them. There are many cross-linked files, and many different categories.
I know full well it is a database problem. In fact, I got Office 2K3 Pro installed so I could evaluate Access for just this task.
After playing around with it I decided against it and used Excel (a sheet checked into source control). My reasons are as follows:
1: Not everyone in the office knows how to use Access, or even has it installed.
2: Everyone and their dog has Excel and is familiar with it.
3: My data set at its extremes will definitely fit in Excel 2k3's restrictions.
4: The List function and Pivot-tables allow me to answer every question I need to.
In the end it boiled down to time. Access might have been more robust, but this document needs to be created two weeks ago and run for 6 months before we retire it.
In my case using it checked into source control eliminates the problem of creating a shared document. I don't need (or want) multiple people editing it. In this case, Excel is the right tool, and I am happy to use it improperly.
There was a time when we thought no-one would ever use Excel again, let alone write a book about it. Internet Explorer ran on SunOS, Star Office just came out, students were writing lots of free spreadsheet programs with perfect build systems and half finished usability.
Some C net writers said with the number of half finished free programs coming out, there would surely be a replacement for Excel one day.
Here we are 8 years later, Excel is king, and the free stuff has evolved into spreadsheets with perfect, finished build systems but still half finished usability.