people using 'set print area' on an excel spreadsheet

[thecolonelbumminganugget]

It annoys me so much I have to leave my desk and make a cup of tea to calm down everytime someone emails me a spreadsheet where they've done this!

There is no justification for this. Either:

A - you have set the important information to print and everything else is backing information. In which case you need two tabs, one with the summary, the other with the backing so anyone who wants to can trace it through but the important information is summarised on the front sheet. Or;

B - it's all equally important but YOU only needed to print part of it. In which case either select cells and use print selected or use clear print area before you save it in a shared location or forward it on. If it is the case that the bit you needed to print is the same bit everyone else will need then I refer you to point A above.

All that happens is that you send it on, the recipient prints it to read, or worse still when they've added their own work to it and printed it, the bit they wanted didn't print because it's not in the print area you dictated, they throw it in the bin, swear at you behind your back and have to go back to their desk, clear print area, and print it again.

I know I'm not being unreasonable when I say the only reason to do this is because you hate everyone you work with!

(Oh god that feels better)

[WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeG0es]

I use it all the time for non-numerical things, tracking lists mainly. Also the signatures, in my (regulated) line of work documents still have to be signed, either by hand or by complex, validated electronic signature systems rather than Word or Excel. We have to be careful of using Excel for calculations too unless they have been validated and the cells locked.

[ClashCityRocker]

Well, unfortunately, yes I do.

I don't make the rules at work, we have strict rules about what needs to be on file and files are inspected regularly.....also, not all of my clients are tech savvy. How do you propose I get them to review the calculation I've prepared, telepathy? Some don't even have email addresses.

[wasonthelist]

Sorry Clash - I wasn't trying to be a smartarse.

[StatisticallyChallenged]

OK, I know it's a thread hijack, but may I reserve a special place in hell for all those people I work with who insist on creating spreadsheets for stuff that has no mathematical or numeric content at all please?

Hmm, I dunno. If you're a home/small business type user then Excel can be appropriate for small scale database type functions where the numerical content might well be limited to dates/phone numbers. Excel functions can still be very useful even when the info isn't numerical.

[stoptouchingthat]

Yanbu OP. It does my head in.

Mostly the print area thing they do could be done by page formatting but this is apparently harder.

Also tables drawn in word. Wtaf.

I do use excel for non numerical things because it makes it easier to format.

We use excel to generate a lot of forms which will actually be filled in by hand day to day.

[ClashCityRocker]

wason no, it's fine for spreadsheets, but then everything else needs scanning in...so the whole file isn't spreadsheet based. In your case, if you sent us excel spreadsheets we could quite easily do a paper free electronic file.

There's also likely to be handwritten notes, third party info, consolidated tax vouchers, p60s, p11ds, bank interest certs in a typical tax file. We wouldn't put that data onto a spreadsheet, just input it direct into our software, but would need to keep a copy. Again, can be done with scanning in, and we are slowly moving towards that, but if we have a paper file anyway it ought to be complete and have the spreadsheet work as well.

I agree there is no need for bundles of papers, but try telling that to some of our clients!

[StatisticallyChallenged]

I don't see how pdfs from the spreadsheet saved to storage create any less of an audit trail than paper prints? I accept I may be missing something.

In theory they don't (I've worked in audit) but unless it is very well managed then being paperless can be difficult, you always end up with some paper items and so if you only have some items stored electronically and some on paper it's very common for one or the other to be badly managed depending on the focus of the individual responsible.

[ClashCityRocker]

Sorry, I know you weren't wason - I was responding to a pp and cross posted

[ClashCityRocker]

And I can echo statisticallys experience...

[thecolonelbumminganugget]

clash I don't know if you were here up thread when I mentioned I'm also a tax accountant. Thank god you're here and know why it is we print. Let's take a moment to gently hold each other

[Twodogsandahooch]

You would all hate me. I'm guilty of many of the excel crimes mentioned above. I've only just worked out to set a filter and freeze the top line with the column titles.

[StatisticallyChallenged]

Oh favourite formula...hmmm...I actually have a big soft spot for the humble vlookup, or it's big bad brother Index Match. Vlookup was probably the first real excel formula I learned and it set me off on exploring excel and ended up changing my career path!

[MouseholeCat]

I feel a bit like I'm turning up to the best party ever at the eleventh hour.

Despairing Excel tale from recently- I was helping a colleague who sits next to me update her CV on which she'd proudly proclaimed her advanced Excel skills.

A week previous she had been sent a large contact list and needed to pull from it just the contacts for a given company to circulate an email event invite. She started by manually copy-pasting into another sheet, then remembered filter function. She applied this only to the first few columns (note: this was not applied to the email field), filtered, saved a .csv and then ran a mail merge from Word to Outlook to send the email. Outlook wasn't set to offline mode. She came to me in a flap afterwards when she realised the email had gone to all the wrong people but had no idea why...

I suggested she might want to use the more ambiguous "Highly familiar with the Microsoft Office package" and instead devote more time to showcasing her inter-personal skills.

[MouseholeCat]

(I also want to harangue the database owner who circulates said contact list, as it's large enough to benefit from being managed through Access....)

[ClashCityRocker]

colonel the struggle is real!

Unfortunately, we have 'making tax digital' to look forward to...Lets hope that very quickly gets watered down...

[caroldecker]

Incidentally, use of Excel for database has caused problems with scientific research. DNA often has gene symbols that excel auto-formats to dates or E numbers. article

[HeartsTrumpDiamonds]

Aaaaaahhhh my people!

I had a colleague who was adding up a column of numbers on an Excel sheet using THE CALCULATOR ON HER IPHONE!!!! I almost had a heart attack.

I'm an accountant but have often thought perhaps I should have gone the actuarial route. Love actuaries. I think they have an awesome sense of humour.

actuarialjokes.com/

[HeartsTrumpDiamonds]

At risk of outing myself, it was in a school and I had the same problem as the genome people in the article that caroldecker linked to - DBS/CRB certificate numbers were getting translated by Excel to 1+E46 or whatever in the school's single central register of appointments (which was really a mini database maintained in Excel ), a key safeguarding document that is meant to be 100% accurate and up to date at all times.

My teaching colleagues could not work out how to sort or filter stuff and the Head especially had form for messing up spreadsheets

[woodly2013]

Oh my word! I never realised excel was so exciting. I am a mere novice and the joy I get from cracking how to....whilst poking about in an excel doc is unbelievable. I managed averaging a row last wk then applying it to the whole column. I honestly left work on cloud 9 feeling like I'd solved world hunger. Please don't have a go at us tryers, help and support with a kind formula and odd tip or two and you'll find many of us eager to please and learn in our quest for excel knowledge.

[DadDadDad]

This thread is unusually civil for AIBU. Could it be that Excel lovers are a nicer type of person?

[Copperas]

I'm one of the dreadful people who use Excel for non-numeric data. As an archivist, cataloguing thousands of documents into spreadsheets is really effective. All that lovely text functionality - it's been transformative. Much easier to check and much quicker than using our clunky database interface. Love this thread.

[unlucky83]

carol and hearts surely those autocorrect errors can be solved be ensuring the correct format in the relevant column - so Gene name column = text, choose your number format (or in fact if you are never going to use the numbers as numbers - text) - unless Excel has just got way too clever for its own good and won't let you do that any more (which wouldn't surprise me! -one of my favourite rants is when Windows won't let me do what I want to because it THINKS it knows what I am trying to do )
Archiving is interesting - a librarian/historian friend was telling me about how electronic copies aren't as good as paper from a historical point of view. We have paper and parchments - even engraved stones dating back thousands of years. We can eg look at the written accounts of a Victorian tradesman or household and learn a lot about lifestyle etc. Electronic copies should last forever - longer than paper - as long as they are backed up and transferred to new systems. But the problem is what we consider standard format now (probably pdf) in a hundred years time will probably be completely obsolete - you won't be able to access the files...
Also it is a bit like if you found a floppy disc now you would struggle to be able to get the data off it -you still could at the moment - but in 50yrs time? in 100yrs?

[ClashCityRocker]

Interesting point unlucky

I reckon in hundreds of years time archaeology will involve digging for, converting and translating old electronically stored data rather than digging holes in the ground.

[mirime]

"I think Excel should work like games, where you unlock features once you've mastered certain tasks."

This for all of Microsoft Office.

Never mind Excel, the things people in work do with tables and bullet points in Word that I have to fix

Also people making flyers in PowerPoint when we have Publisher. Just why?

[wasonthelist]

This thread is unusually civil for AIBU. Could it be that Excel lovers are a nicer type of person?

I was thinking that.