• Garrett Fitzgerald (unregistered)

    Hmm. I used to work for a fulfillment house that sometimes sent out orders for a large software company. Our data process usually involved importing the data into Excel at some point.

    Please God, let this not be my own personal WTF....

  • (cs) in reply to chrismcb
    chrismcb:
    talaxor:
    Nope. Not nearly enough.

    First off, excel is not a database, but it's a really easy way for non-tech folds to look at data. And no, Access is not the answer. It's too hard and confusing.

    I work as a deputy auditor for a large county in Ohio.

    We've got 400,000 properties. We have a file of the sales / transfers for each parcel. An average of 6 sales per parcel = 2.4 million lines

    Now, we can split the data based on years, type of sale, type of property etc., but when you need a report that spans those boundaries, it makes you think "Gee, it'd be nice if Excel could just support an infinite number of rows, or let me set how many rows I wanna deal with"

    And of course, over the course of time, the number of sales / transfers/splits/merges/who knows what will continually increase the size of this file.

    Addendum (2008-04-04 19:54): Ugh, something ate my entire message.

    The thing is Excel IS a database. Its not a high falutent one like Oracle or SQL. But it is still a database.

    Of course it should not be used for enterprise things (like keeping track of 400,000 propertiers)

    I believe that any "Hello World" program in any language is a database. Just not a very interesting or useful one...

  • pmv (unregistered) in reply to Simon

    Not that I do not think that is bad, but to be fair, the actual value is apparently 1/1/1948. Check it by changing the format.

  • Gaz (unregistered) in reply to Jon B

    Does my head in. The number of spreadsheets I get with a Saab Mar-09 or May-09 models makes me want to scream!

    And don't get me started on leading zeros...

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Simon

    nono...its a FEATURE not a BUG

  • Name (unregistered) in reply to n9ds
    STOP HELPING ME!!

    Well, didn't you know you can easily turn off unwanted kinds of "helping" right where they happen?

  • neil (unregistered) in reply to Simon

    Jan-48 is actually mmm-yy, so 48 is supposed to represent the last two digits of a year. This is slightly less wtf-y, but still a little braindead.

    Try entering 1/8567 and you'll get Jan-67 (at least this will work in the year 8567, I guess) and when you check the formatting you'll see that excel was being helpful by assuming you meant 01/01/8567.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to iMacThere4iAm

    It certainly has an effect on Word 2003, and don't forget you can always use Control+Shift while selecting text with the mouse.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to iMacThere4iAm
    iMacThere4iAm:
    Zylon:
    Christopher:
    What's funny about the highlighting all the text thing is that i've NEVER seen a user actually want that to happen - ever!

    Watching your grandma and other "normal" people struggle against software that "helps" you: priceless.

    And there is no magic way of turning it off. Grr.

    Ahem.

    Microsoft Word -> Tools -> Options -> Edit. Uncheck "When selecting, automatically select entire word".

    Amazingly, I think you'll find that doing that has no effect whatsoever on Word's behaviour.

    It certainly has an effect on Word 2003, and don't forget you can always use Control+Shift while selecting text with the mouse.

  • Ken (unregistered) in reply to maldrich

    Damned excel. Ever try specifying a 9 digit ZIP in proper format?

    example: 01602-2121 (me) enter into Excel... 01602-2121<enter> oh wait, now it says -519. Thanks for assuming my ZIP was me trying to use excel as calc.exe! (trWTF is that I know people who open excel and proceed to use cell A1 just like most people use windows calculator)

    captcha: no one cares, srsly

    </way-out-of-date-post>

  • Daniel Smedegaard Buus (unregistered)

    TRRWTF is that y'all (all a y'all people) are still using Excel despite of all this, a product that should never have existed, much like Access, or "Deny Access", as was it Zen naming originally.

  • Craig (unregistered) in reply to Zylon

    Hmm... I actually find the whole-word selection rather useful, and when I don't need it, just select past the word and drag backwards easy as pie

  • Norman Rorqual (unregistered) in reply to Simon

    Oh my goodness, I had no idea Excel was this confused. But what's even stranger? If you type in 1/48, it returns Jan-48 like you said...but if you type 1/28, or any other valid date, it returns 28-Jan.

    It switches to day-first format for valid dates, then back to standard american format for non-valid dates (while still making them dates). And I live in america.

    Is there any possible reason for this?? Could there ever be some circumstance under which you would WANT this sort of feature?

  • Norman Rorqual (unregistered) in reply to Norman Rorqual
    I:
    If you type in 1/48, it returns Jan-48 like you said...but if you type 1/28, or any other valid date, it returns 28-Jan.
    Jan-48 is actually mmm-yy, so it's january 1948 ...
    Oh, so that actually makes sense. I just wasn't thinking there. Oops. Still a pretty annoying feature tho.
  • (nodebb) in reply to Dazzer

    Well isn't this ironic. The forum software was helpful in interpreting your post.

    While I would love to laugh, I ... too have to admit I have trouble with Excel cell formatting.

    .< Stop helping me indeed.

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