Rant Excel!

[Jupitus]

Ok, so I am going to make this a poll to see if I am right (which I am, of course) about spreadsheets.

 

[dysfunction]

Do you have an example of this pastel shading?

 

[caLLous]

I don't give a toss but I voted yes to annoy @Jupitus.

 

[Scouse]

It depends on the colours I guess.

I vote for show us an example

 

[Raven]

It's all about traffic lights in pastal. Red, Orange Green

 

[dysfunction]

So something like this:

 

[Job]

They should make the font the same colour as the box and use it to monitor positive results in a pandemi..

Oh looks like the probably have.

 

[Jupitus]

This is good:




This is an abomination!!

 

[dysfunction]

This is good:

View attachment 42728


This is an abomination!!


View attachment 42729

No the abomination is the one you can't seem properly.
Also how do you signify different groups of which ones go together vs those that don't if you use monochrome? The little marker on the right is useful but makes it much harder to see instantly.

You can filter on colour so no need for the extra column...

 

[caLLous]

Are we just talking pastel colours or any colours that are kind of close to each other? You want the colours to stand out and you want as much contrast as possible so I suppose I begrudgingly agree but even some colour is better than no colour. I don't work with spreadsheets but when I do data visualisation I spend a fair amount of time picking colours (and reacting to complaints from colour blind folk).

 

[MYstIC G]

This is good:

View attachment 42728


This is an abomination!!


View attachment 42729

Yes, colours instead of data for filtering is pure awful

 

[Scouse]

Yes, colours instead of data for filtering is pure awful

It doesn't have to look good - it just has to be visually readable.

 

[dysfunction]

The colours are for analysing the data to make it easier for review.

I wouldn't use shading in a report being published to management...

 

[Bodhi]

You're lucky, our place's CIO has just decided as we're a Google company we can get rid of our MS Office licenses, and use Google Docs instead.

That means using Google Sheets for presentations......

 

[Yoni]

In my departments we have strict rules in spreadsheets used for external use (not for personal use)
- pastels blue or green used for headings and totals
- font only calibri 11 is allowed
- for analysis colours can be used but must be pastel and only in detailed back up


What iritates me more is the use of bright colours either for analysis OR for presentation both give me migraines - addtionally what is more horrible is the lack of titles and dates which I generally will reject before even looking at what has been supplied.

 

[Zarjazz]

You're lucky, our place's CIO has just decided as we're a Google company we can get rid of our MS Office licenses, and use Google Docs instead.

That means using Google Sheets for presentations......

Honestly I'd take that small downside for getting rid of the rest of the MS Office/365 suite.

 

[MYstIC G]

It doesn't have to look good - it just has to be visually readable.

That's not what I'm referring to. The number of people who add a data layer in Excel by going "I'll make these ones Green, those Red, these Amber, some Purple" instead of capturing what most of the time is just "Y/N" data in the actual dataset they're working with is painful. It's like putting lipstick on a pig. Progress tracker spreadsheets are the absolute worst offenders for this.

 

[Jupitus]

That's not what I'm referring to. The number of people who add a data layer in Excel by going "I'll make these ones Green, those Red, these Amber, some Purple" instead of capturing what most of the time is just "Y/N" data in the actual dataset they're working with is painful. It's like putting lipstick on a pig. Progress tracker spreadsheets are the absolute worst offenders for this.

Yep - 'Hey, let's sort this by status.... hang on, where is the 'sort by colour' option???'

 

[dysfunction]

Yep - 'Hey, let's sort this by status.... hang on, where is the 'sort by colour' option???'

There is a sort by colour option....

 

[Jupitus]

There is a sort by colour option....

Is there really???? That's hilarious... features designed for the baying masses .... how does it work then... ascending is to the sequence of 'I can sing a rainbow' ? .... I'm sure it's fab for some, don't get me wrong, but blimey o'reilly!

 

[dysfunction]

Is there really???? That's hilarious... features designed for the baying masses .... how does it work then... ascending is to the sequence of 'I can sing a rainbow' ? .... I'm sure it's fab for some, don't get me wrong, but blimey o'reilly!

you sort it so each colour is grouped together. You have to select a colour to group together.

 

[Gwadien]

Haha you bunch of privileged wankers.

At my last school I setup a spreadsheet with some basic calculations and cells would turn colours for certain numbers.

They thought I was the second coming.

 

[Scouse]

Haha you bunch of technically competent wankers.

ftfy

 

[Gwadien]

ftfy

That was sort of the joke. Thanks.

 

[Scouse]

That was sort of the joke. Thanks.

I'll put more smilies in from now on

 

[SilverHood]

If it helps display data, then fine. If it's part of the data, then that's a no no.

Story time... I once helped out one of the operations teams when I worked at RBS, they got sent a colour coded spreadsheet every day and it took 3 people 2-3 hours to action the red, orange and yellow items. The data was not sorted, and there was 30,000+ items on it, with up to 500 items needing action and they frequently missed stuff, which was then flagged for the next day. I built them a macro that took in colour of the cell, assigned a value 1-5, then sorted entire sheet by that value. The following day, there was an incident call, because for the first time ever, there was nothing missed, and they thought there was a systems outage.

 

[dysfunction]

If it helps display data, then fine. If it's part of the data, then that's a no no.

Story time... I once helped out one of the operations teams when I worked at RBS, they got sent a colour coded spreadsheet every day and it took 3 people 2-3 hours to action the red, orange and yellow items. The data was not sorted, and there was 30,000+ items on it, with up to 500 items needing action and they frequently missed stuff, which was then flagged for the next day. I built them a macro that took in colour of the cell, assigned a value 1-5, then sorted entire sheet by that value. The following day, there was an incident call, because for the first time ever, there was nothing missed, and they thought there was a systems outage.

Sounds like the same people working for the government