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?

Happy days! I was an expert in Lotos 1-2-3 back in the day. Excel is so bloody annoying as it's similar but just different enough that I have to keep looking things up.

I used to write spreadsheets that meant the less computer literate just had to input the required data on one sheet and all the complicated stuff was locked away from them on other sheets.

No! The hidden flight simulater!

Nothing wrong with that. I've found that the internet can usually help me solve many excel issues even if it requires a bit of "frankenformula" from different sources. I'm certainly not averse to a few nested IF statements using stuff I've borrowed from Google searches if it gets the job done.

It's not generational ime. I had the 'pleasure' of managing a couple of people who had incompetence down to fine art. Same age as me, there or there abouts, both disgusted and affronted that their manager was a woman. I'm convinced that was the issue. Their fragile little egos just couldn't handle the fact I was a woman telling them what to do. Arseholes.

I'm in my 30s and in a professional job but honestly I've never mastered Excel. It's just boxes swimming around on a page to me.

I've tried a few times over the years when people were horrified I couldn't use it, so I felt like it was something I should know but it doesn't go into my brain. I don't really care. I don't need it in my life.

That's brilliant!

If you used excel in school you must be at least 20 years you get than the OP's husband. Can't really compare

You’d be surprised how many people including young people,who have no idea how Excel works or even Word for that matter. I am forever formatting documents because many don’t understand how tabs, page numbers etc work.

I do get the impression that many people have never been taught Excel, Word etc and were expected to just know. When DD was eight she came home with a presentation assignment which was to be completed using PoerPoint, except no one taught her how to use it, let alone presentation 101. I taught her and ended up teaching her friends as well.

My colleagues look up dates on a paper calendar. I have shown them that there is a calendar on the computer and they don't need to get up of their seat but it goes in one ear and out of the other. They don't like or embrace change. I love change if it makes my life easier and simpler.

Just 🤯😱🤷‍♀️🫢

They probably haven't heard of Excel either.

I have next to no idea how to use excel (although I did know it could add on its own!) and have never heard of a ‘document feeder’ as one of the first replies mentioned. There’s a first time for everything isn’t there? 😄 there is so much to learn in the world. I’ve never had any need for excel or photocopiers in any of my jobs in my life.
We definitely used Excel in school but never learnt (probably used, but didn’t learn) formulas. I’m 34 🤷🏻‍♀️

You don’t actually need to add a formula to total a column. You just hit autosum.

I'm petty good with excel. But making a booklet is beyond me!
Have googled many times and still can't figure it out.
Anyone care to explain, post a few links on how to?

I've used a few computer programmes but not Excel.

I swore when I first saw it back in 1996, I would never use it. All those boxes. Ugh.

Who wants to stare at that all day. It goes against what being a human being is all about.

If it's necessary for your job, then fine, but I do feel sorry for you.

Yeab, don’t worry, the word “computer” doesn’t mean “adding machine”. That’s just something PP made up. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I found out this week that my friend, who has had a laptop for years, only ever has one tab open. I had done something for her on a few other tabs I opened up and flipped between them to show her things, then put a short cut on for her to get back to the website we had used. She had honestly never used a new tab at the top, always opened her emails and gone to other sites from that, then back again. I don't know how she copes like that, but she does.

I never learnt formulas or really needed to use Excell in my first real job to need to learn. I can auto sum but that's about it. I've started a new role and it's 90% excell. Managed to blag it so far but am going to ask to do a course.

i don’t think that’s true.

I work in excel and power bi a lot. We have employed some admin people recently. Most are 20-25 and have very little knowledge of excel. Not even highlighting a a column to get a quick average.

I was asked to travel to another office to give some support on excel. When I got there the one thing they needed was to sum up a column. They weren’t fussed about anything else. This was someone aged about 30. I was more annoyed they hadn’t even bothered.

I have 2 data engineers who work for me. One 50 and one 28. I showed them an example of sensory map that was done in excel and wanted it replicated in a dashboard. They didn’t even realise you could do a density map in excel. Because they know different tools for it. They have so much more knowledge than I have.

People know what they know. Younger people don’t always have better IT knowledge. Especially excel.

OP’s husband didn’t know Excel had such a function, therefore there was nothing for him to Google.

DH is in his 50s and is a quite intelligent person (or so I thought).

YABU for saying this alone - what a nasty way to speak about anyone, let alone your own husband. How is he supposed to know how to use something if he has never been taught?

IME people will generally only learn the minimum to get the thing to do what they want. Someone always knows some shortcut or smartass way of doing things better or faster; some people take that on board, others hate being shown up and doggedly carry on the hard way. Must say that adding up excel cells with a calculator might mean that they haven't really grasped what a spreadsheet actually is, though.

The thing that really used to have me pulling my hair out was people who couldn't grasp the idea of section breaks in Word, and would pad out a page with endless carriage returns to get the next section to start on a new page. That is all fine until someone edits the page. I must have spent days fixing documents full of that.

Initiative and self-led learning?

"After all, multi million and multi billion pound companies run their figures on spreadsheets and they don't have a small army of people in offices adding numbers with calculators!"

Ha!

Around 10 years ago I was assigned to a consultancy project at a very large multi million pound company in the UK. One part of the project was looking at how departmental managers and team leaders spent their time, since everyone was complaining that "there aren't enough hours in the day" and huge backlogs were building up.

One Monday morning I sat with a Team Leader and asked what her key task for the morning was. She picked up a sheaf of paper reports and began adding up numbers on a calculator, before then entering the results into an excel spreadsheet. She then manually found an average (by using the calculator) and entered that number on to the same excel "Weekly Report" spreadsheet.

Not only did this take the best part of a morning, but her maths were incorrect which meant that the entire report, on which key management decisions were being made, was likewise incorrect. After she was finished I showed her how to add in excel, and how weighted averages differed from unweighted averages. When I asked about the source of the paper reports that she was using, it turned out that these came from a system that had a built-in function to allow data to be automatically exported to excel (and I later found out that it could also automatically produce the very report that the Team Leaders had to produce every week).

She had been in the job for around 10 years and was one of around 20 Team Leaders in that department alone. It transpired that few of these staff could use excel, and almost all were both wasting time and making significant errors in their reports. Team bonuses were being paid (or not being paid in some cases) on the basis of incorrect reports. People hired and fired, some presented with awards or promoted, others "managed out". Major reports to the industry regulator were inaccurate.

As this was the second major organisation in which I'd encountered this, I'd be in no way surprised if this was still the case in numerous businesses.

Oh come on, he's not old. My mum is in her late 60s and can do more on Excel than I can.