You’re entitled to your opinion but I would say Excel is one of the best, if not THE best spreadsheet application ever produced. It’s one thing that Microsoft actually got mostly right and one of the only reasons I still pay for an Office 365 subscription.
If you’re just creating simple spreadsheets, there’s plenty of other options out there.
But, if you’re a power user doing a lot of complex data analytics, Excel is still the king.
My main gripe is that I still have to use VBA for a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Yuck.
If you’re going to do complex data analysis, isn’t it a pain to use ANY spreadsheet software, no matter how good? I do mine as a Jupyter notebook. The spreadsheet is just for looking at the numbers, maybe sorting some things.
Stop making me feel like my Excel knowledge is useless😔
Excel is definitely not useless! Learning a little Python (especially the pandas package) can go a long way in making data analysis easier though
But, if you’re a power user doing a lot of complex data analytics, Excel is still the king.
Only if you refuse to learn SQL and do everything in a fraction of the time with way more functionality.
That works when you have access to a SQL database instead of a bunch of massive CSV files.
cracks knuckles
import pandas as pdNow you’re speaking my language!
Not saying there’s any reason to switch, but I believe you can load CSV’s into sqlite.
Datasette would be something that I would try for CSV’s as well, that seems like an interesting piece of technology I haven’t had reason to use yet.
Finally there’s always Jupiter Notebook and any respectable DataFrame-solution.
Not to knock spreadsheet-solutions too much - I certainly see their value and use them frequently - but if I had to do something that warranted writing VBA, I’d probably reach for a tool I could combine with some form of VCS like Git at least.
Importing CSV into SQL is trivial and gives you far more control than Excel can.
Jupyter gang, any other data scientists here?
I’m not a power user, so I’m often frustrated by Excel trying to do things I don’t want it to and by its abundance of features that I’ll never use.
And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.
I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.
And at least at my workplace, a lot of work processes use poorly-designed Excel spreadsheets for critical tasks, because it’s such a simple way to manipulate data.
I also find that when I need to do more complicated data analysis, Excel starts to become limited, and I find Python to be a more powerful and flexible tool.
Capability is a double edged sword. Any tool that is capable of doing something is going to be used by someone to do that thing, regardless of whether it should be. Excel gets abused and used for things that it shouldn’t be frequently in corporate environments because of its capabilities. I can understand being frustrated by that.
I use Excel for reporting and analytics because it makes manipulating and visualizing data very easy. Especially if you know what you’re doing. No need to write a UI or worry about portability between workstations, etc. At the end of the day it’s a tool. A very capable one. Like any tool, it’s not the right one for every job.
ohh I see you can also use some ACL type of application. Excel is amazing but can’t handle databasis, it has a very small limit
Dude just ask any advanced LLM how to do what you need to do in excel. The info is out there and they’ve digested in a million times.
Or, don’t. And let your inabilities to do things consume you emotionally. Idgaf.
Edit: Lemmy’s hate-boner for AI is dumbfounding. I get that it’s a hype train and shoved down your throats but if you ignore that it will get you results way faster than googling ever did you’re basically “old”. And I say this pushing 40.
Downvote away, but I challenge anyone to give me a db and a desired subset that I can’t produce by simply querying a good LLM.
Lol. Don’t bother asking Chat GPT for help. You will get so many completely wrong answers. At least the answers will be formatted nicely. Complete bullshit. But easily readable bullshit.
Every time I’ve asked ChatGPT for help coding, I’ve wound up needing to rewrite it all for myself. LLMs make baffling design decisions (because they are just paraphrasing Stack Overflow, not making actual decisions).
I have found them helpful for turning error messages into more legible explanations of what went wrong, but AI-generated code has not been effective, in my experience
I also love word, publisher, and visio.
I grudgingly accept outlook.
I despise PowerPoint
Excel is probably the most powerful application ever created. Especially now that it can be connected to SQL and python natively
There’s a tool for a given job. And for some, Excel may be decent. But for many, MS Access used to be far superior to Excel. Not sure if it is still maintained well, as I no longer use MicroShit
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Curious what you get out of value from the subscription that you wouldn’t get from a slightly older non subscription version of excel?
Has XLOOKUP made its way into the non-subscription version? I’ve found it a lot easier and flexible to use than VLOOKUP.
Index/match crew checking in.
Excel can be it’s own kind of awful, but using it with other people makes me want to jump off a bridge onto a rusty bed of nails. They move cells around, change the labels on columns, color cells with no benefit, change half a sheet to comic sans, they fucking send you back “bullshit-v1.0-good.xlsx” then ”garbage name v0.3_gooder.csv”. Jesus fuck. The shitty thing has built in version control you ignorant fuck!
ohhh nonono You hate it because you either don’t know how to use/don’t use it enough, or you just don’t like your job. Excel is amazing, I could cry talking about it hahaha I had to work with google sheets once and almost had a heart attack, if I had no excel my job would be unberable
As a CPA I can attest Excel is really useful for financial data analysis and problem solving. It takes time to learn, and there are limitations to manage, but when you know what you’re doing it really gets out of your way so you can focus your attention on the work product instead of the tool.
On how I got efficient, when I started my career I tried to optimize any task I had to perform repetitively, and after 3 years everything was pretty fast. After that I tried to optimize one process every month, and now I have a pool of ideas to pull from when problem solving.
As an engineer I can attest that it is also useful for quick calculations and illustrations, especially at the concept stage. We also ran process “simulations” in it for fun, but of course something like SciLab would be better suited for it. The possibility to simultaneously work in the same spreadsheet was also a godsend during lock-downs.
But there’s libreoffice calc tho
