DH has been using a calculator to add things recorded in Excel

[RokaandRoll]

AIBU to think this is absolutely astonishing?

I found out because we were doing a new budget spreadsheet and he read out what we spend on different things each month while I recorded each item in Excel. He then asked me to read the amounts back to him so he could add them up. I was like WHAT??? I'll just add a formula in Excel. He said "really, you can do that?" I asked him what he thought Excel was for, and he said he didn't know as no one had taught him.

Have you ever found out someone was doing something in a completely bizarre and illogical way on a similar level as this? DH is in his 50s and is a quite intelligent person (or so I thought). He has used Excel in his job although obviously not extensively. AIBU to be completely shocked?

With your logic there must be an awful lot of unintelligent unskilled people in the world if you’re basing a persons worth on knowing the ins and outs of excel.

What a very primitive and ignorant world view. There’s billions of people in the world who know lots of things you haven’t or never will grasp.

I used to have a department manager that couldn't cc an email - must have showed her 20 times then gave up.

Omg l love that, so true!

... and we're back to the Luddites.

When politicians talk about the need to improve productivity in the UK, improving computer skills is the nuts and bolts stuff they should be addressing. The basics should be taught in schools, but the best way to learn is by doing, so employers and universities should be assessing skills and providing good compulsory training and support to improve efficiency.

I'm 62. I didn't grow up with computers. I learned to touch type as a student because I thought it might be useful, using a manual portable typewriter. Years later I occasionally got a chance to try out some early word processing software on a desktop PC at work, but this was all before most workplaces had a computer on every desk, long before most places had email or even word processors. I went on maternity leave in the early 1990s and took a career break of a few years when my children were small.

Fortunately for me before I went back to full-time work I was able to go on a cheap course at our local FE college to learn the basics of Microsoft Office (European Computer Driving Licence, no idea if that still exists). We went through the basics of each application and had a test under exam conditions at the end of each module. I learned all the basics of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and file organisation and a little bit about databases. I loved it, and it gave me the confidence to look things up for myself and try to learn how to do some of the more advanced stuff as and when I thought it would be helpful.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s my employer (a university) provided pretty good face to face training on this kind of thing, but then phased it out. Big mistake. I could see that my colleagues' IT skills and confidence varied massively, but nobody seemed bothered about this or tried to remedy it. I vividly remember sitting beside someone entering marks onto SITS, the student database, and every time he wanted to copy and paste he did it from the menu instead of using Ctrl C, X and V. So sloooooow. He was not the kind of person who would have been grateful or gracious if I'd tried to point this out, though, so I bit my tongue.

Not for me. I'm an excel thinker. I think very logcally and rationally.

I guess it depends on the age of a person but I'm 35 and it was litrally a basic requirement of our mandatory GCSE's. My DH is nearly 40 and learned in school too.

What mandatory GCSE subjects did you sit? DD is 23 and they were never taught excel at school. But she didn't do computing at GCSE. I went to classes to learn all the Microsoft Office programmes when I was in my thirties - back in the 1990s because Im not a dinosaur stuck in the past.

There is a whole generation of young people who find it unthinkable that older people didn't grow up with mobile phones, computers and fax machines.

When I was doing O levels we didn't even have calculators.

Thank goodness for progress.

Incompetence of a certain generation?
I think you mean incompetence of certain individuals who’d rather someone else did the job if they can possibly get away with it.
As a Gen X with a DH of the Boomer Gen (many of whom were heavily involved in the development of forerunners to a lot of current software models) who have recently set up our own IT company, I think you should be a little more careful with the casual ageism.
By all means, criticise lazy individuals.
But after nearly 30 years and 50 years respectively, developing software and new systems in export and import trade channels and Supply Chain Finance - currently selling to not only banks but also LAs and even Governments, I can assure you technophobia has got nothing to do with what generation you belong to.

We use a specialist system at work that for circa 20 years we've all been of the impression doesn't support shortcut copy & paste. I have a new starter in my team, with us 5 days who has figured out that it is possible and how to do it

I find it sweet 🥺 Your husband is my new crush, hope you don't mind 😍😬

He sounds very passive - if we only know what we've been taught we are pretty limited. Many (I would hope most) people find things out for themselves, either by chance or because they actually set out to find answers to their problems.

I knew this but still have a note on my phone with bills/ expenses and use a calculator to add it up.

It literally doesn’t.

I voted YABU because you’re taking the piss out of someone who hasn’t actually been taught a piece of information. Even worse, that someone is your DH!

I have to say I disagree on this. I thought it was common general knowledge that Excel and other spreadsheets are software applications you can use to record and analyse numerical data, just as it's surely general knowledge that Word is for word processing and PowerPoint for preparing presentations. This thread suggests I may be wrong, though.

Referring to @housethatbuiltme post
During my postgrad in architecture a fellow student failed his Masters because all his drawings were on a computer and not hand drawn
That was 1992

🤣🤣🤣

Do you learn languages exceptionally quickly and intuitively? Do you have natural skills as an artist? Do you have fantastic public speaking skills? Nobody is brilliant at everything, neither are they curious about everything.

I could easily say that anyone who can’t pick up languages quickly or who are crap at public speaking (I am great at both) simply don’t have the right personality type 🙄

People can also learn by being curious and teaching themselves. I google for new apps and ways to do things all the time.

I was in a meeting this week and the PA minute taking has worked in similar roles , including to some very high level city executives, since before I was born. I watched her manually type in completed and manually change the colour of each box containing 'completed'. So clearly doesn't know how to do a drop down from a list or conditional formatting. FWIW I grew up when a school might be lucky to have a BBC computer and later on maybe one or two dial up internet enabled computers. No one has ever taught me to use excel, you tube and the internet are marvellous things.

Everyone is different. Everyone works in different ways. It doesn't make anyone 'lesser'.

Absolutely.
What a boring world it would be if everyone was interested in the same stuff.
Im learning piano but I have absolutely no interest in spreadsheets and Excel

You're the second person who has argued with this... you can look it up? The etymology is from the Latin word for calculate/add up/reckon.

Edit - I guess you're quibbling with the Machine part?

So Adding Thing. Rather than Adding Machine?

Why are you shocked that someone doesn't know something they haven't been taught or haven't used?

This.

Why would someone who has never used something, or needed to use something or been taught to use something, know how to do it ?

Of course YABU.

I agree. The verb is computo, and means reckon/calculate/work out/sum. The women, all maths graduates, who worked at NASA doing complex calculations back in the 1950s and 1960s (as shown in the excellent film Hidden Figures) had the job title computers.

People use excel for all sorts of things - many of them nothing yo do with numbers. I expect I was using it for at least 10 years before I ever knew how to use it to calculate because I didn't need to know. I have a PhD & have been in senior roles in my sector for over 15 years.

In the good old days, software came with an instruction manual. An actual physical book you could read, should you be so inclined, and learn what the software did.

The modern online help and tutorials are nowhere near as good. You need to know what it is you're asking. If you don't know, how are you even supposed to know it exists?

I miss Lotus 123 as well...