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?

Does that not make them difficult to untie?

This.

You are not thick just because you don’t know something.

You are a bit of a twat if you laugh at someone and make them feel thick for not knowing something

My large public sector employer provides no training on how to use the programnes and packages we have and, what a surprise, loads of staff don’t know how to use them.

In fairness, that's because the tables function in Word is pretty bloody dire. No sorting, no filtering, pisses you around with changing formatting randomly; useful for a template where you have defined sections and alignments for a document, but shit for much more than a shopping list.

I'll give one tip for people who have to create a bcc list (and they don't want to run a merge), though, especially if they're doing it for somebody whose head would explode without a Word list they could cut & paste into the bcc box - if you have the original list in Excel, copy and paste the values only into a new Word document, then Ctrl-H to find and replace ^p with ;(space) - that removes all the returns to give a list of [email protected]; [email protected], etc.

But now with hybrid working you'd need two screens at home and two at the office so I'm sticking to one.

When I first came across excel I had not realised it was a calculator. I had seen it being used as a database. I can manage basic excel.
I am 59 and the only computer training I have ever had was an initial session when we were all sent on how to use emails. That was when the company were introducing computers. Everything else has been picked up. I know I probably do some things long winded because it is the only way I know how to do them.

Yes that made me laugh too.

I have used Excel for over thirty years, but much preferred it when they had a physical manual rather than an online one.

Well yes, unless you do a course, nobody teaches you. Most people learn by doing...

Like a pp i'm right at the age where computer stuff was just being introduced into schools as i left.
Unless you chose it for an elective in year 11/12you wouldnt have been taught things like excel. We had mandatory computer classes in years 9-10 but it was the basic stuff like word, ask Jeeves etc.
I use excel a little bit at work and i really hate it, i'm usually quick to learn but i just cant seem to wrap my head around it. I even enrolled myself in an online course my workplace offers but i haven't started it in over 3 years cause i cant be bothered with the frustration 😂

"I asked him what he thought Excel was for, and he said he didn't know as no one had taught him"

There's your answer. We only know, what we have been taught, and it really is not a reflection of our intelligence.

DH and I are 63 and have never been taught Excel (leastwise I don't think he has).
He creates quite complicated spreadsheets for various things to do with our finances. I barely ever use it at all; I'm a software developer and I find some really basic things I want to do aren't at all intuitive. I've got nice data pipelining software so I just knock up a protocol do what I want - plus it can read and write specialised data sources and calculate a lot more than just maths functions.

I'll probably have to submit to learning how to use excel vaguely properly when I retire... I expect via the 'google and swear at it' method.

I think this sort of failure is common. Employers give staff access to time saving tech. Then either don’t provide adequate training (at the right time!!!) or assume staff know how to use it, because the person cheerleading the introduction of said programme is an expert and thinks everyone will get the basics. Ends up with people either not using it at all or not making use of the full range of benefits.

Public sector is absolutely champion at this.

You don't need special workplace training to learn the sum function on excel! It's so instinctive to click the labelled tabs. Formulas - autosum.

Genuinely how can you use Excel repeatedly without clicking on the tabs out of idle interest to see what's available? Is it a personality type thing, to have no curiosity.

If you need special training for this, you need special training to use the microwave in the office kitchenette. It's a similar number of buttons to choose from. In fact, my microwave buttons are less well labelled.

I work in a local toiletry franchise as and we had a very stroppy woman come storming back in with her receipt saying her items were added up wrong by the till (which is a modern computerised system) l called a manager who went through the very long receipt and of course it was correct. She insisted my manager get a calculator and add up all the twenty odd items manually (customer had actually done it in long arithmetic on paper !) to check the total was right. She was insisting if was £1.75 too much. Manager ended up just giving her a refund just to get rid to which she then marched triumphantly past me shouting how l had made a mistake and couldn't reckon up.

Tabular layout?

Yes. Unless you’re actively using any computer programme, you just forget it.

I only really know sum= in excel, but have recently found out about pivot tables, which I’m keen to learn.

As other pp said, if you don’t know the functionality of a system, you don’t know what you need to know.

😂 Yep. That’s my experience too and I’m definitely very ‘tech savvy’ in general. Photocopies are a law unto themselves.

This only works if people keep their calendars updated in Outlook. I work in a university and in my experience the majority of faculty do not use their Outlook calendars precisely so that they can avoid meetings.

Until this year, I wrote down my income and expenses for my business (it's a simple business with just a few in each, per month) on a piece of paper, and then sat with a calculator at the end of each tax year to add them up.

I moved to a spreadsheet at the start of the year, and it blew my mind that it'll take me less than 10 minutes to submit my tax return this year. Happy days!

Not at all, merely reiterating that in the public sector in which I worked there was no training supplied, one had to simply get on with it!

My mum has me do all her amazon ordering - delivered to my house then she comes over to collect it. I did offer to buy her it all and get it delivered to her house but she refuses to believe they can do that.

I am surprised at anyone who got workplace training in all this stuff. I was working when all this type of software was introduced and I was never given any training. We were all expected to just work it out as we went along.

The Bunny ears method of tying shoelaces makes for a knot that is less likely to come undone but is just as easy to undo when you want to take the shoes off - I can do both but bunny ears is my goto for shoelaces!

Eons ago there were things called 'comptometers', that meaning was more akin to adding machines than computers.

I was taught but found it difficult so my dad taught me to tie two loops in a knot. I still do that now at 48.