It will live in a folder with:

Spreadsheet(1).xls Spreadsheet - shortcut.lnk Spreadsheet(2) - Copy.xls New Spreadsheet - DO NOT USE.xls

IT guy here, Excel is a data analytics tool, not a database, not a word processor, not a sales system, not a photo album, not a notepad, not a paint program.

If at anytime you are treating Excel as a database, you are doing it wrong, and you deserve me mocking you when asking for help recovering it when it breaks, I won't as I am not a dick, but if I did, you would deserve it.

If you want a database, build an SQL database, or have someone build it for you, not me.

The customer wants the brand new website we are building them to be able to load data from several types of excel files and then email them an excel file with results. Please shoot me...

ITT, very salty IT guys... I'd rather folks use Excel then some home made stuff. That's the real nightmare fuel. VB, not .net, just VB, from 1995. You'll beg to have bad Excel after you deal with that stuff. 😵😱😭

Me, being scolded for using ipynb apps to deliver rapid feature turnaround to customers, generating a million dollars in revenue:

Our finance department, tracking that revenue in a 700MB excel spreadsheet which is version controlled by a 13 year old email thread:

what do you mean, Excel isn't a Database?

My dad asked if I could look at a spreadsheet he uses at work, maybe fix a couple of things that he has to manually adjust. This meme is frightfully accurate, the earliest parts of this thing are older than some of the junior devs on my team.

I've been on both sides of this as a sysadmin for almost 15 years then as a data analyst. IT has so many requirements and barriers and any end user tool you have free access to will possibly be an easier route than procuring a boutique solution through IT. Yes of course IT will do it proper but that takes longer, just build a tool in excel and use an access database on the file server cause its something you can just immediately do. Yeah its not "right" by IT standards and causes headaches for IT but sometimes it's whatever gets the job done next week is what's going to be in the businesses best interest.

Also a lot of these tools are used how they were designed to be used. If a couple people have a function they need fulfilled and some excel tool with macros can provide that in less than a month and save those people a ton of time then I don't see a problem with it. Just make sure SLA is very clear make it clear they can't blame IT if there's problems, offer the best advice for risk management.

At my old job, they had an HR person that was not qualified to be an HR person, and she "accidentally" sent an Excel spreadsheet of everyone's wages and salaries to the entire company email distro.

1. She was not fired, but put on a suspension.
2. Don't know why she had an unsecured Excel file of important information like that.
3. Everyone was pissed lol

My take is that Excel is great for people to throw together quick and efficient tools for their own use. The problem is when these get distributed and then everyone uses something that has no version control or QA/QC.

I see this a lot because an engineer gets annoyed with IT or existing software restrictions and learns enough VBA to be dangerous. (Spoiler, it me.)

On one of my last jobs they required us to do a straightforward but time consuming task with excel, it was ideal to automate it in software but my manager won't ask the dev team because he said it would be very expensive and they were focused on more important things. I did it with macros on excel and word and kept it to me and my coworker, so we had like two hours of free time everyday, only had to look like we were busy with the sheet.

Didn't the UK's covid track and trace system break because it was running on excel

Having worked in 3 companies, Excel sure seems like the most popular database.

I love Excel! The best part of my job is where I get to use Excel. The worst parts are where I have to use power point or interact with other people. Sadly, most of time is spent on PPT and interacting these days. :(

When I was in high-school I made an inventory management/pos for my school's merch shop in excel and vbs. It was the single worst thing I have ever made and how I discovered what feature creep was. Got me a course credit though!

I am guilty of this. I have a set of fucking ghastly macros that do monthly number crunching for me. Currently moving it all into SQLite and R.

Did you know? Many published indexes (indexes like S&P500 etc...) are computed with excel

I TOTALLY trust their values

"Here's the sign up sheet for the Holiday meal!"

.xls