Reamde by Neal Stephenson
Reviewed by Thomascyne from Portland, Oregon.
I always select data from the top down, when I go to make a chart.
I never think to hit the Ctrl + Down Arrow first, so that I can select the range while leaving the active cell at the top.
I always end up with a chart waaay down at the bottom of that very long selection, where my active cell is.
I never want it all the way down there.
I always select the wayward chart, then move it gingerly up towards the Headings bar, in the vain hope that Excel will go into scroll mode, and let me release the chart where it belongs…at the top.
I never seem to hit that magic sweet spot, where Excel starts scrolling quicker than a crawl.
I always curse, then cut the chart, hit Ctrl + Up Arrow, then paste it up where it belongs.
I never remember this monkey business the next time I go to make a chart.
I always hope that MS will sort out basic usability stuff like this in the next release.
I never hold my breath.
Yes please.
WTF? That formula is the same as the last one, only it uses Table notation!
–Edit–
Out of interest, here’s how that 1st message looks in Excel 2010. (Apologies for the old-school look of these next two screenshots, vs the previous ones. I’m too tight to install Excel 2010 AND 2013 on all the machines in our house, so this screenshot comes from my wife’s PC, which runs XP, on account of that same monetary tightness.)
Let’s say I do decide to take the option offered in that 2nd bullet point – to close the message and correct the formula myself – and click NO. What do I get?
You told me that one click ago. Get out of my way, so I can do what I said I was going to do one click ago…i.e. fix the damn thing!
I spend heaps and heaps of my time on usability things when I build stuff in Excel. I can’t comprehend why these really crappy legacy usability issues are still perpetuated by the MS developers release after release. WTF.
Rob’s got a good post called What is Power Pivot’s #1 Competitor? which has some great comments, as well as a hilarious YouTube clip.
One of his musings is that companies like Tableau – who are indeed competitors to Power Pivot – don’t really view Power Pivot as an obstacle to Tableau getting new customers. They know their biggest competitor is still just Excel itself.
That’s also PowerPivot’s biggest competitor. To the point that the opportunity cost to MS of users foregoing PowerPivot for Tableau is an order of magnitude smaller that the opportunity costs to MS of Excel users that simply never realize PowerPivot might be something they could use to sack lots of overpriced, underwhelming reporting analysts.
As per my comment I left on that post, I haven’t embraced PowerPivot yet because I’m still too busy panicking about not knowing everything I think I need to know about Excel and VBA. There’s still plenty of posts on this site that I don’t even partially comprehend, and only when I’ve got these under my belt will I STOP panicking about “this” and then START panicking about “that” (PowerPivot). Guess I’ve got a one-track mind.
Last time I looked, PowerPivot and those other new-fangled inventions weren’t programmable by VBA to a great extent. So in my mind – and based partly on what I do know and largely on what I don’t – I get the feeling that I can’t very easily integrate these new-fangled inventions into my existing factory. While I’m sure that I can probably replace quite a bit of that VBA-driven factory with these new-fangled inventions, I’m loathe to step away from the production line while I do this, because of a fear that orders are going to be piling up somewhere.
What’s more, because I switch companies every 18 months to 3 years, while I could possibly put these new-fangled inventions to work where I work now, there’s no guarantee that my new skills will be required in a new role, given PowerPoint ain’t exactly as ubiquitous as Excel is. In fact I think an increase in my old skills will probably be a better bet.
That all said and not done, why to I still get the feeling that I’m missing the opportunity of a lifetime by not investing now. Why do I have a vague sinking feeling that I’m sinking almost imperceptibly into a career tar-pit, rather than evolving into a higher life form?
Ah well, if I’m going to be a living dinosaur, then I’m in good company and in the right place:
