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?

Erm, on the one hand, if they wanted to keep the document stapled then, no, I wouldn’t advocate removing the staple and then stapling it again.

On the other hand, stapling documents in our work place stopped being a thing decades ago, not much gets printed out or photocopied either.

Useful for sense-checking as you go along, but what about when the total needs to be marked as reviewed, carried to a different calculation, or multiple totals are required?

I don't understand why people do this either and just said as much to my DH for him to say, what are you talking about? How else do you get a capital letter? 🙄

I have a very senior corporate career and wouldn’t have a clue how to use anything other than the absolute most basic of Excel functions!

However, I excel (genuinely no pun intended) at other things at work that others wouldn’t have a clue how to do. So it’s all swings and roundabouts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Easter_eggs_in_Microsoft_products#:~:text=Microsoft%20Excel%20contained%20a%20hidden%20flight%20simulator.,contained%20a%20hidden%20pinball%20game.

Same way I do them! I was taught this method by my Dad who is left-handed and had had to figure it out himself as a child - he just couldn’t get it the way he was being taught.

100%.
😂

I do exactly this too, nobody showed me how to tie shoe laces, neither!

Golly, his brain would explode at a pivot table 😱🤯🤯🤯🤣🤣🤣

I'm a software developer and never had the need to use Excel and I'd be like your husband and not know that Excel could do that for me. I don't think that makes me stupid, I've just not needed to use it so don't have a clue.

Every day is a learning day! The late great Richard Feynman was a massive fan of lifelong learning, so yay for learning new Excel things https://fs.blog/feynman-technique.

I'm also torn about whether to share the info that Microsoft is working on bringing Python (a programming language used by data analysts/scientists) to a spreadsheet near you. https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/get-started-with-python-in-excel-a33fbcbe-065b-41d3-82cf-23d05397f53d. I think it's probably a bad idea for many reasons, not least because it's very hard to check things are right in Excel, see also a whole society dedicated to Not Using Excel for v important work :) https://eusprig.org/research-info/research-and-best-practice/ but also see most banks, govt departments, NHS organisations still using them.

@BashfulClam

As others have said, every day's a school day. I've been using Excel intensively for many, many years and for a huge variety of things but I didn't know the 'Alt=' thing either. I'm all happy now! Thanks.

The bit I don't get is why you even need a formula. Just highlight all the cells and it auto ads it for you

I did all the cross-referencing on my PhD thesis by hand- it took literally days. Then DH pointed out that Word can do it automatically 😭

I've been derailed by memories of the excel flight simulator. 🤪

https://rezmason.github.io/excel977_egg/index.html?o=tqg&l=44,56

You're welcome

@PenguinFlipper

I think it's even worse. They're not adding Python to Excel so that you can use Python like any other function. Your code gets sent off to a (Microsoft owned) server and the results sent back. No thank you!!

My latest discovery is the "Read Aloud" tool in Outlook and Word. It's so much easier to proofread something if this nice woman is reading it back to me.

He has used Excel in his job although obviously not extensively. AIBU to be completely shocked?

Depends what he did on excel.

Where I last worked certain people (all men!) were full of themselves as they had been trained on Excel and were setting up all sorts of "datababases" for the rest of to use. In fact all they were doing was producing fancy coloured lists and tables by typing things in, not an equation anywhere, yet they thought they were the bees knees.

In our office we are sometimes asked to add data to acquisitions spreadsheets made by our language specialist cataloguers. There’s a basic format for how these work, set by their head of department. One language specialist has a monster of an Excel spreadsheet that makes the relatively simple unnecessarily complicated. The data is just for their departmental use but it would work so much better if it aligned more closely with the template which lines up with the budget manager’s (that’s me) audit requirements.

Re: Excel sums - there are moments when I’m using Excel with currency conversions tracking purchases and allocations when I make one calculation on the screen and one on a calculator. But not the same one and not for just adding something up that Excel has already added up.

One thing I will say is that I never use Excel for family budgeting. I don’t have a spreadsheet for that. I could easily do it, but praps might not until I retire 😂 and spend less of my time on it at work.

Because if it’s an important document and it gets jammed in the feeder, it can tear or be damaged inside the machine when you’re getting it out. I prefer not to use the document feeder if the document is important (mock exam scripts, irreplaceable handwritten files, etc.).

I also do this, because nobody taught me how to tie my shoelaces! Works just as well though, as far as I can tell.

Remember those spirit copiers - gestetners? For the life of me I could never remember if it was shiny side sheet up or shiny side sheet down. I must have wasted so many of the damn things! I was damn good at tacky backing though.

This wasn't.

Ooo, we got one of those. Keeps changing the tab colours. My poor colleague stopped just short of buying things on the wrong list 😮

When at college doing my NVQ in business administration at the age of 17, we were doing exercises in Excel. The guy behind me was taking the time to come out of the spreadsheet to use the PC calculator to calculate instead of just using the spreadsheet 🥴