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The First Rule of Microsoft Excel -- Don't Tell Anyone You're Good at It (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Anand Kalelkar started a new job at a large insurance company, colleagues flooded him with instant messages and emails and rushed to introduce themselves in the cafeteria. He soon learned his newfound popularity came with strings attached. Strings of code. Many of Mr. Kalelkar's co-workers had heard he was a wizard at Microsoft Excel and were seeking his help in taming unruly spreadsheets and pivot tables gone wrong.
[...] Excel buffs are looking to lower their profiles. Since its introduction in 1985 by Microsoft Corp., the spreadsheet program has grown to hundreds of millions of users world-wide. It has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings. Advanced users can perform such feats as tracking the expenditures of thousands of employees. At the same time, it has complicated the lives of the office Excel Guy or Gal, the virtuosos whose superior skills at writing formula leave them fighting an endless battle against the circular references, merged cells and mangled macros left behind by their less savvy peers.
"If someone tells you that they âjust have a few Excel sheets' that they want help with, run the other way," tweeted 32-year-old statistician Andrew Althouse. "Also, you may want to give them a fake phone number, possibly a fake name. It may be worth faking your own death, in extreme circumstances." The few Excel sheets in question, during one recent encounter, turned out to have 400 columns each, replete with mismatched terms and other coding no-nos, said Mr. Althouse, who works at the University of Pittsburgh. The project took weeks to straighten out.
[...] Excel buffs are looking to lower their profiles. Since its introduction in 1985 by Microsoft Corp., the spreadsheet program has grown to hundreds of millions of users world-wide. It has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings. Advanced users can perform such feats as tracking the expenditures of thousands of employees. At the same time, it has complicated the lives of the office Excel Guy or Gal, the virtuosos whose superior skills at writing formula leave them fighting an endless battle against the circular references, merged cells and mangled macros left behind by their less savvy peers.
"If someone tells you that they âjust have a few Excel sheets' that they want help with, run the other way," tweeted 32-year-old statistician Andrew Althouse. "Also, you may want to give them a fake phone number, possibly a fake name. It may be worth faking your own death, in extreme circumstances." The few Excel sheets in question, during one recent encounter, turned out to have 400 columns each, replete with mismatched terms and other coding no-nos, said Mr. Althouse, who works at the University of Pittsburgh. The project took weeks to straighten out.
Some people just have 10,000 rows of data and its kinda overkill to put that small dataset into a database.
I completely disagree. It's overkill to be using excel for 10,000 rows of data. Why are you using a spreadsheet when you have that much data? It's completely the wrong tool. Spend a little time and learn a new tool! SQL doesn't mean having to store it on a server somewhere.
I'm not a programmer or a system administrator. I'm a bit of a power-user and a trouble-shooter. I tend to master what I find useful. Back in 2003, I found use for Excel (pivot tables, specifically) for a hobby and from thereon out, it was a massive boon to me at work.
Today, having mentored a couple dozen interns and entry-level employees, I can tell you that teaching THEM pivot tables, data norming/data cleaning, and the like has made them extremely competitive in the job market. I tell them, "What I will teach you will not only get you instant interest when submitting an application, but will help make you indispensable to most organizations."
So ya, if your time is too valuable to help someone in Excel, don't tell them you're competent. But if you want to get a job or help others get jobs, learn and train others in the standard formulae (IF/Then, Count, etc.), more complex formulae (Vlookup, Index/Match, etc.), how to clean up data quickly, and pivot tables.
> "Since its introduction in 1985....... Excel has simplified countless office tasks once done by hand or by rudimentary computer programs, streamlining the work of anyone needing to balance a budget, draw a graph or crunch company earnings."
Wow it's a miracle!
Nah I'm pretty sure computer spreadsheets existed before 1985. Like WordPerfect's Quatro and Lotus 1-2-3
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Excel is not a database.
You cannot transactionally update one file accessed by multiple users.