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?

I'm a psychiatric nurse, in my late 50s. My knowledge of excel could fit on the back of a postcard. Sorry for being thick, but I'm sure my knowledge of mental health excels (See what I did there) yours.

We all have our own knowledge and skills base.

I was so shit at word! Much like OPs H, I didn't use it much but when I did have to, I was crap with it.

This is so true. I am 45 and learned to type at school on state of the art electric typewriters. We had a computer room at school that held about 5 MSDOS pcs and so we got about 15 minutes a term using them to type simple documents.

I went to university where we did things using actual books in a library and then went into work where everyone was using computers for everything!! I never was taught anything to do with Microsoft office. If you don't know on excel then you don't know. I know that it can do some amazing things but I have no idea how to do them myself and I don't use it often enough to learn really.

I'm in my 50s also and don't think anyone ever taught me to use formulas in Excel...you just kind of figure things out, surely? But I'm positive there are a lot of things I'd benefit from knowing but don't and I wish I knew what they were. DH is finding this very funny also by the way - he's able to laugh at himself! And he wants me to give him an Excel lesson - maybe I'll get him one of @Acornsoup 's brilliant mugs after he's learned a thing or two 😁.

My first ltb, I couldn't look at him the same way!

That's how I maintain a reputation as being a bit magic - the lack of knowledge in the general population and frequently in employers.

Try adding in the ability to build complex reports in a MIS and a passing knowledge of network and IT structures/processes and you become The Guru.

Excel actually is a massive calculator. Hope your revelation will now save DH loads of time.

I am in my late fifties and have used Excel a fair bit, though sporadically. It was part of my working life. I even still remember the pre-Excel days when it was all still Lotus 123!! That did work in a broadly similar way and when Excel first began to replace Lotus then most of the same formulae worked on both.

Spreadsheet software is designed for doing calculations and managing basic databases.

I totally relate to your husband, although I can add up in excel. When someone does something clever in excel i am completely in awe.

I love a spreadsheet! However, I had been using PowerPoint/word professionally for a decade before DH showed my how to use the format painter. I use it all the time now! Also for the copy and paste keyboard shortcuts.

Someone at work photocopied an already very bad photocopy of something and complained the photocopier must be broken because it came out as the same bad copy. I think she actually thought the photocopier would somehow correct her bad original!

Nobody taught me either. I taught myself over time. I did know that spreadsheet software was able and designed to add up huge columns of figures, and could also subtract, multiply, divide, calculate percentages etc.

I always worked on a need to know basis, so my Excel capabilities are quite basic, but basic formulae are the ones you mainly need and which will get you through.

One of my colleagues minds was blown after I watched her count the lines in a spreadsheet to figure out how many of a particular category of item there were.

I booked an hour in with her and showed her through a few basics and put together a crib sheet for common formulas and functions. Now she's doing pivot tables, using conditional formatting like a master and has drastically improved her efficiency.

You don't know what you don't know, take the time to show him.

My boss had no idea about the search facility in outlook or windows explorer. He would be scrolling through his emails manually looking through for something. I'm like just use the search bar.

I only discovered Microsoft to do app last week and it's going to be a game charger for me. Any email I flag goes to my to do list. Can't wait for work Monday to start using it.

I love using shortcuts and keep meaning to learn more of them.

my boss was really great at excel but didn’t know about’Alt=‘ put that in the cell under your figures column it adds to the column for you. The day I mastered vlookups I thought I was the smartest person ever!

No one's going to sit down in front of excel and intuitively know every formula, function, and exactly where and how to find what they need, I accept that.

But you have to be very dim to sit in front of a a spreadsheet full of numbers, want to do x, y or z with it, and nothing have the gumption to ask someone, or just Google, "can excel do this for me"?

That's pretty mean tbh. Everyone's mind works in a different way.

I noticed my husband tying shoelaces very strangely a few years ago. He creates a loop with each end of the lace separately and then ties the two loops in a knot. Nobody had shown him to tie laces in a bow!

Not an excuse, that's just laziness ans lack on initiative. I'm self taught on virtually every system use at work. Before 'the internet' (shows my age!) I learnt from books - remember the "Dummies Guides?". For excel I taught myself Pivot tables by googling it and use it all the time now.

OP, I Have had to show numerous people including secretaries and PA's how to use scheduler in Outlook to find available time slots for meetings. Rather than constant emails to meeting participants asking "are you all free at X Time/Date". Frankly I'm embarrassed for them.

You'd be surprised at how many people don't use even the simplest of formulae in Excel. I'm an accountant and I'd say half my clients who provide spreadsheets for their tax returns and small business accounts have done all the calculations by a calculator. One of the first things we do is to insert formulae to sum all the rows and columns and links between cells, tabs, sheets, etc. We have to do that because the ones who use calculators are the ones who forget to change the totals and links when they add an extra row or column or change a figure.

Even the ones who do use some formulae, often get it wrong, i.e. add up a column of figures by using A1+A2+A3.... instead of @sum(A1..A3) so when they add in a new row it doesn't get added into the total.

Or the ones who type in a "£" sign into a cell, so that it's regarded by Excel as a text/label instead of a number and not included in forumulae/calculations.

We NEVER take any spreadsheet at face value and always run through it by inserting our own formulae as a "sanity check" before we start doing any proper analysis or using it for anything.

I really wish that schools would teach the basics of spreadsheets as part of IT or Maths lessons, it would be far more useful.

It's good he can laugh at himself. There's nothing worse finding out these things years later and knowing you could have been using them.

In my first job which was food related, I was 16 and computers were not very common, the manager asked me to type up and print the menus, me all delighted with myself because I was fast at typing on my typewriter 😁 went into the office to be confronted with the biggest computer ever, I was clueless and it took me the whole day to figure it out. I didn't know that you could move the cursor to edit mistakes, so every mistake I spotted I was using the backspace button and deleting everything until I reached the spelling mistake and retyping 😳😳

I'm my second job not long after the manager handed me a huge bunch of papers and told me to fax them to another store 😫 this time I said I had never sent a fax, he said put the papers in there, key in the number and it'll send. I did as he said but the paper kept coming through to the front tray 🤦so I kept sending them must have done it 5/6 times, I was in there absolutely ages and he came running in red in the face saying the other store had phoned asking why a whole lot of blank pages were being faxed to them, not only had I not put them in upside down, back to front, I just didn't cop that the pages don't disappear.

I guess who only know if you use excel. I think I’m pretty nifty on there, but then my husband comes along and makes me feel very basic.

I’m 70 and no way would my brain cope with Excel even 25 years ago!

Another mid-40s here. I took a class out two that covered the basics of many computer-related topics at university. It included Excel, so I'm vaguely familiar with it, but irl I never use it for keeping track of numbers, and would have a lot to learn, if I started.

It's surprising he didn't know it could work as a calculator, but perhaps he thought it was just a way to keep things in nice, straight columns and rows... Which is how I use it in my work.

Back in the early 80s, in my first job, they bought their first photocopier - prior to that they used carbon paper for small quantities of copies and a gestetner duplicator and wax paper for large quantities of typed documents. The was no facility for "copying" a document, so they (as was standard in accountancy and solicitor practices), would write or type out the contents of a document and two people would "read out" and initial it as being a verbatim "copy" which would stand from a legal perspective. When the photocopier arrived, the senior partner (in his 60s and stuck in his ways) insisted on every photocopied sheet to be likewise read out and checked by two staff and initialled in the same way as he didn't trust the photocopy was always going to be exactly the same and accurate as the original!!

I’m another one who has no need, knowledge or interest in learning this. Recently I had a conversation with my brother who was advising me on some financial stuff. He said I should create a spreadsheet with x,y and z and rambled on for a while (I’m also not very financially literate!). Then he said, ‘so can you do that?’

Without missing a beat I just said, no. Luckily for me he didn’t laugh in my face, he probably rolled his eyes a bit and then possibly remembered I do know a lot of other useful things and he did it for me.

Result. Takes all sorts.