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?

Why thank you.
I'll pay you later

No, it isn't @Badbadbunny. If you don't know you don't know. It isn't something you would work out for yourself if you are unfamiliar with spreadsheets.

I mean, if he doesn't know he doesn't know! He's not psychic. It's not knowledge we are born with.

Yes I agree.
I'm pretty much self taught in Excel and have used Google and You Tube to solve most queries I've come up against.

I can relate to both sides of this one!

I work in a very manual job, where it's not uncommon for people to have no computer skills, and many of my colleagues are also quite a bit older than me. I'm 39, and did Excel at school. Recently, my boss's partner very gingerly asked me if I could fill in a spreadsheet with everyone's hours for payroll, as he was going to be away for a fair while. When I went into the office to do it, I found he had provided four pages of step-by-step instructions, including 'when you have finished, save the file' and instructions how to save a file. It was and remains one of the most thoughtful things I have seen - he was so careful to anticipate any possible issue a totally non-computer-literate person might have. Clearly, those instructions had been developed by seeing how people who didn't know much about computers responded, and it really impressed on me how long it must take to explain something properly to someone who doesn't know.

Have you told him about Pivot Tables though?

"Lists are sooo much easier in Excel, you can filter by surname, first name, date of birth, date of joining. Produce reports, export as PDFs, address labels...
To do this in Word would take ages!"

And Access is even better, and should be used rather than Excel, for non-numerical data.

I remember a colleague was "WTF!" when "Paste - Transpose" was explained. They had previously been moving records individually.

As above, if I don't know how to do something in Excel, I Google. I recently needed to know the top 5 reoccurring items from a list of over 1,800. I wouldn't need to do this calculation every day, but I suspected the capability to do this was there.

Love a good mail merge

I'm an English teacher who uses excel more than 23 year old trainee me ever even considered i would. I do not have a logical mind, hence being good at English and going into teaching. But I can do v lookups and everything. I amaze myself frequently. Dh, even after 20 years as a teacher spouse, still doesn't understand why we just end up teaching ourselves this stuff. I have many spreadsheets.

Respect for the vlookups!

Not if you don’t use spreadsheets.

I'm.46 , of reasonable intelligence, i hope ...but I've never used excel and I've no idea how to do a PowerPoint!

I do use an accounts package though and I love it that it adds up everything for me and works our VAT!

Changed my life. Took hours away from me, but gave hours back, so reckon I'm even.

Mate said her mother told her to move to Portugal

Apparently she replied, mum, I don't even speak Spanish!

I didn't correct her

I used to teach vegetable growing and other assorted tricks of life and each year the qualification I would teach would change ie I'd have to shove it into Skills for Life etc and so Id have a different lot of individual milestones and achievements to show.

I programmed each new qualification and unit into a spreadsheet, so that I could mail merge the lot to create a new suite of worksheets for each one, for each student so the whole course was printed out and ready at the start of each year.

It saved me so much time!

Aww that's lovely. I don't mind at all but you'll have to join the queue as he's got quite a fan club already (mostly women in their 80s due to the work he does).

He's lovely and very intelligent. To anyone who thinks I was "sneering" my post was meant to be lighthearted although I appreciate it may not have come across that way.

I’m 50 and still don’t know how to use Excel!!
I was never taught, I muddle through with google but I’d love to really understand it.

I love a vlookup. Xlookup is even better.

Strange example.

You could easily google for a recipe, just as you can easily google for the basics of Excel.

It's more a case of looking at some eggs, flour, milk, etc., and eating the flour and drinking the milk separately, because there's no critical thinking and inquisitiveness to mix them together and make something.

For people who genuinely don't think excel does anything else, don't they even notice the menu bars, widgets, etc across the top? Surely it's a clue that the program does more than just put numbers in boxes??

I'd have more understanding 40 years ago when people first used Supercalc or Lotus 123 which were DOS based and didn't have menu bars and all the other shortcuts etc. In Lotus, you literally did just get a screen with squares and no visual clues as to what it could do, as all the functions appeared after pressing the "" key and was then menu driven by pressing keys. But even back then, on the earliest and simplest spreadsheets, it was pretty obvious that you could do simple calculations, why else would you put numbers in boxes if you couldn't do something with them?

The difference is that he'd knew there WERE things he could do with the numbers and presumably he'd have the sense to do a quick google search to see what it could do.

Some people on here are trying to claim that they (or others) wouldn't have any idea or enquiring mind about it doing ANYTHING at all, other than put numbers in neat columns.

I can understand some people wouldn't realise you can turn those numbers into a graph automatically, but the mind boggles to think they didn't realise that with the World's most popular spreadsheet program it wouldn't be able to add a few figures together.

You are computer literate though @karriecreamer.
I don't think you have any idea that someone who isn't computer literate just wouldn't know these things intuitively. And if they really aren't computer literate they might not knw how to use google effectively.

I use excel all the time, but I have more understanding that some people just don't get it. Just because you know something and it comes easily to you it doesn't mean it is the same for everyone.

Some people on here are trying to claim that they (or others) wouldn't have any idea or enquiring mind about it doing ANYTHING at all, other than put numbers in neat columns.

Because it is true that some people don't know. If you have never used excel before how can you expect to know what it can do?

Do you always struggle to understand that some people aren't as computer literate as you?

I recall the government spending huge amounts of money on free computer literacy classes back in the New Labour days. There were opportunities to learn how to use basic productivity software like excel in a basic way.

I'm afraid that in most office-based roles it simply isn't good enough for people to say that they don't know about spreadsheets.

Although I am not generally surprised I am shocked that there are posters on here who appear to be in financial roles who are quite happy to say they don't know how to use excel. I wonder whose life you are making a misery at work? For such roles and similar I 100% guarantee that your inability to use excel is being covered by the fact that someone junior to you is doing more work than they should be.

So, if you are in a more senior role and can't even add up a list of numbers in excel then get yourself in a course now. No excuse in 2024. No-one is expecting you to become some macro genius, but being able to add data, make a simple chart, etc. should be in your skill set.

I'm afraid that in most office-based roles it simply isn't good enough for people to say that they don't know about spreadsheets.

But they usually get some training when in an office. Once you get your head round some basic stuff it opens you up to enquiring whether it does other functions that make life easier.

A lot of financial roles use specific accounting packages that aren't excel based so you shouldn't be shocked. If there is not a need to use it in the office why would anyone know how to use it.

I don't use Access as we have our own (superior) databases. As a result my Access skills are rather rusty, and I am not goung to waste my time teaching myself Access when I have no need for it.

I use excel, two different bespoke databases and an ERP system at work, but I don't look down my nose at people who don't have the skills to use them.

Oh, and I would have to relearn how to do charts, graphs, pivot tables etc because I don't use them as there is no need for them in my job - so shoot me. I haven't done a pivot table since the 1990s.

Completely agree with you @RampantIvy. For a lot of tasks a calculator is still just as useful as excel. If you want to keep a record of calculations then you can always save it in excel.

These days who sends actually mailings of paper letters? That will be why many people don't know how to use the mail merge function in Word. Yes, you can use it for emailing, but (unless they've changed it in the last couple of years) it doesn't give you the option of checking your merge before firing out the emails which is one of the reasons why lots of companies use specialist programs and software for this stuff instead.

I have mixed feelings about adhoc short courses. My experience is that unless you use what was taught, you forget it anyway. Very basic courses can be good for people to understand how something works.

i think once you learn how excel ‘thinks’ it’s much easier but the higher courses don’t hold that much in long terms value.

Computer basics, again in my experience, is taught in schools. Ds is 13 and learns far more than Dd (20) did at the same age. I didn’t spend alot of time on excel during the pandemic with ds as he really likes it and it’s stuck with him far more than course content stuck with me or my colleagues. Dd often texts me asking if excel can do X or Y and I talk her through it. Not sure can quite grasp the inner workings. Despite being very intelligent in other areas.

I actually think it is ok to say you don’t know in the work place. Unless you claimed to be an expert at interview, I would rather someone tells me they don’t know and I will support them to a place where they do know.

Quite a few of our Directors worked their way up from the field. They have an excellent amount of practical experience and knowledge but not so much in working an office. As their peer I am happy to support (or find support) for them so they can be successful in their role.

As an aside, I have an excel spreadsheet with links to 15-30 second TikTok’s, if I come across something that might be useful but won’t use it so often. That’s been a great help.

And being able to share it with colleagues that aren’t as advanced in excel has really helped them.