Spreadsheets

[SueEllen]

The story is true according to The Usherwood on LBC.

They couldn't get all the data into one excel spreadsheet so they split it. So the data didn't make it the way to PHE.

Don't forget Typhoid Dido is Head of Track and Trace and Head of the agency to replace PHE.

 

[darmstadt]

Fake coronavirus message has small-penised Brits terrified - Sunday Sport

 

[jayn200]

Using Excel as a UI for end user reporting is fine (a lot of the top BI tools have addins to support this very technique), the problem is too many companies still try to use Excel as a DB. Or they try to dump all source data into Excel and then consolidate in the spreadsheet rather than using the BI tool to do this and then just drop the result into Excel for reporting.

I've made a contracting career in financial/accounting trying to teach accountants how better to report their data. Problem is, a lot of people are still scared of DBs, and it's not helped that IT bods don't educate the end users and make out it's all a complex black box

Yeah I agree.

Excel should never be used as data storage but is totally adequate for presentation, especially when the data needs to be manipulated (without the source data being changed) on an ad-hoc basis which is common in finance. If there is no manipulation needed or if the data is better changed at source then a data visualisation tool is better for presentation than excel for a whole range of reasons.

But yeah it looks like they were using it for data storage here which is a joke when they are literally using this data to make economic decisions that potentially could have impacts in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars.

 

[minestrone]

Using Excel as a UI for end user reporting is fine (a lot of the top BI tools have addins to support this very technique), the problem is too many companies still try to use Excel as a DB. Or they try to dump all source data into Excel and then consolidate in the spreadsheet rather than using the BI tool to do this and then just drop the result into Excel for reporting.

I've made a contracting career in financial/accounting trying to teach accountants how better to report their data. Problem is, a lot of people are still scared of DBs, and it's not helped that IT bods don't educate the end users and make out it's all a complex black box

What's that Arthur c Clarke quote about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic.

When everyone in my industry is using Excel my ability to join a number of 3 million row database tables makes me look like Gandalf.

 

[The Bona Fide]

I once did some work on a spreadsheet task that I had been warned was going to be very tedious. Took me about an hour & I thought that was pretty undemanding.

Then got a rather tersely worded email telling me I had only completed 10% of the task.

You see, when I opened the file it was scrolled 75% to the bottom & I just didn't notice all the entries above.

Not the only time I've made that mistake & WTF does excel open the file with the previous user's scrolling saved? Really annoying because it's not helpful & makes it easy for dunderheads like myself to miss things.

 

[Eirikur]

If only they hadn't culled him off:

 

[quackhandle]

Surprised they aren't calling the spreadsheet, "the database".

qh

 

[ladymuck]

I once did some work on a spreadsheet task that I had been warned was going to be very tedious. Took me about an hour & I thought that was pretty undemanding.

Then got a rather tersely worded email telling me I had only completed 10% of the task.

You see, when I opened the file it was scrolled 75% to the bottom & I just didn't notice all the entries above.

Not the only time I've made that mistake & WTF does excel open the file with the previous user's scrolling saved? Really annoying because it's not helpful & makes it easy for dunderheads like myself to miss things.

When I started the task I'm working on this morning I didn't notice the table had been filtered so was only displaying about a quarter of the data. Not a big deal but I found it funny - if I'd been more awake I would have done my usual check for filtering and hidden rows/columns and reset to A1 before I got started.

 

[Mordac]

Yes they blame it on excel.

Covid: 16,000 coronavirus cases missed in daily figures after IT error - BBC News

Picnic, again. More accurately, the chair occupied by the idiot running this sh!t-shower, for whom losing data seems to be something of a speciality.
If the entire Covid strategy of the nation rests on some Excel spreadsheets being passed around between people who don't know what they're doing, we are in for a seriously rough Winter.

 

[WTFH]

When I started the task I'm working on this morning I didn't notice the table had been filtered so was only displaying about a quarter of the data. Not a big deal but I found it funny - if I'd been more awake I would have done my usual check for filtering and hidden rows/columns and reset to A1 before I got started.

The number of people who don't put filters on properly - e.g. they click on the header row to apply filters, rather than applying them to the whole spreadsheet
Or insist on having a blank top row so it prints out better
Or merge cells
Or put carriage returns and blank lines in cells so they look more like a test document
Or ...