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SpreadEveryone: The Fetchland Excel wire

1 lurker | 101 watchers

flanker Mar 2019 1:27pm, 22 Mar 2019 18,166 posts	0 flanker So all those hours spent writing import scripts or text editor macros to sort out dodgy output could have been avoided? :'-(
run free Mar 2019 3:41pm, 22 Mar 2019 3,372 posts	0 run free Been there since Excel 5!!! Also Power Query can also do the same trick plus more
um Mar 2019 12:02am, 23 Mar 2019 830 posts	0 um Be careful with dates though ... I found it often auto assumed US dates (although most of my colleagues were US) except when the day of the month was >12 and it then mixed in UK format (ie 3/5/19 would be 5th March while 13/5/19 would happily be 13th May in the same column) (I know there is a date format specification, but that takes an extra step!) Any other things that you don't know about?
Curly45 Mar 2019 9:13am, 23 Mar 2019 3,868 posts	0 Curly45 Haha dates piss me off in excel. I tend to convert everything to the numeric code and work with those then use a helper cell with the code formatted as date for everyone else to use. Date sorting is a pain in bum otherwise!
NDWDave Mar 2019 12:45pm, 23 Mar 2019 8,944 posts	0 NDWDave Remove duplicates is also quite handy
SPR Mar 2019 12:49pm, 23 Mar 2019 27,600 posts	0 SPR Never had issues with Excel and dates. Access on the other hand...
NDWDave Mar 2019 1:00pm, 23 Mar 2019 8,946 posts	0 NDWDave Don’t get me started on dates. I worked for a British company which was bought by an American one and then by a French one
GlennR Mar 2019 1:26pm, 23 Mar 2019 41,511 posts	0 GlennR Our septic cousins have got it more right than we have though. MMDD goes in correct numerical order, and if the international standard was YYYYMMDD things would be a lot more logical than they are now. Some firms I’ve worked for used that for dating documents.
NDWDave Mar 2019 1:45pm, 23 Mar 2019 8,947 posts	0 NDWDave I use yymmdd too when naming files. It was more the flip flopping of formats. I had someone who set up a folder structure 1st Q 2017, 2nd Q 2017. When sorted, they were the wrong order
Diogenes Mar 2019 2:24pm, 23 Mar 2019 35,312 posts	0 Diogenes MMDD is only in the correct numerical order if you have YYYY at the front. It’s batshit to have MMDDYYYY