# Reasons why Lotus was better than Excel



## Gerald Higgins (Sep 3, 2008)

First of all, let me say that Lotus was NOT better than Excel.

But as someone brought up on Symphony and then Lotus, and who was forced to make the change to Excel the hard way, I still think there were a few features about Lotus that were, in isolation, better than Excel.

Please note - you don't need to list ways in which Excel is better than Lotus - there's lots of them.

I never use Lotus any more, whereas I use Excel pretty much every day, and I'm very comfortable with it.

But just for fun, here are some of the ways in which I thought Lotus was better than Excel.
If Excel adopted some of these features, it would be a better product (IMHO).
I'm referring to Excel 2003. Maybe some of these things can be done in 2007 - I haven't seen it - and maybe they can even be done in 2003, but I just don't know about them 

If anyone has any more to add, or thinks these weren't actually advantages, it would be fun to hear about them. 

1) Turning 2 into 2+2
If your cell contains 2, and you want to change it to 2+2 (and yes, I know, that's a really horrible way of doing it, but sometimes it's a useful quick fix), in Lotus, it was simply {f2}+2. The cell stored 2+2, and displayed 4, which could be used in further calculations. Try that in Excel, and it turns it into a text string of 2+2, which is useless in further calculations. If you want the numeric value, you have to insert an = at the beginning, in other words, {f2}{home}={end}+2

2) Macros
Lotus supported at least 2 different macro techniques. You had Lotus Script, which was similar to VBA (I never used it, so I don't know how good it was). You also had the basic keystroke macros linked to the classic menu - for example /WIR to insert a row. If you were reasonably proficient at Lotus, it was easy to pick up this method, and build powerful macros with it. And on top of that, you had the keystroke equivalent commands, such as {PGUP} which were interchangeable with the classic menu keystroke commands. I found learning this very easy - I'm still struggling with primitive VBA macros.

3) The left-right scroll bar didn't interfere with the tab names. Yes, admittedly, this left some dead screen space if you only had one tab. But how often have you been sent an Excel spreadsheet where you struggle to find the l-r scroll bar, or don't realise there's other tabs, just because someone else has almost hidden them ?

4) The colour palette was smaller / bigger.
It was bigger, because you could select from about 250 colours in Lotus, compared to Excel's 56. I really miss the larger Lotus palette.
But in other ways, Excel's palette is bigger, because you can customise it from an almost infinite spectrum. That's a powerful tool, but how many people actually use it ? And if you do try to use it, it can be difficult to find exactly the shade you want, or to replicate a shade. For me, 250 fixed colours is better than 56 choices from an infinite spectrum.

5) Data Sort
In Excel, standard Data Sort lets you choose 3 sort keys. Usually that's more than enough, and I know there are ways to get more if you really want to. But in Lotus, you could easily choose many sort keys - I don't know if there was even a limit. Admittedly choosing many sort keys would be difficult to keep track of, but needing 4 sort keys won't be that uncommon.

6) The floating properties dialog box
This was a really neat feature of Lotus. If you wanted to format something, you got a floating dialog box, which stayed on screen after you'd done your formating. If you wanted to do something else, like work with a chart, the dialog box became the chart dialog box. It was easily accessible, constantly offering ways to refine your work.

7) Creating multisheet formulas
Entering a formula like @SUM(A:A1..B:B2) was easy. I haven't found the easy way to do it in Excel.

Any more ?


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## Gerald Higgins (Sep 3, 2008)

And another one . . . the format painter icon in Lotus could be used on several different targets. In Excel, after the first target is done, you have to re-acquire the format, and so on for every single instance.


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## RoryA (Sep 3, 2008)

4, 5 and 6 are to some extent addressed in 2007. The Format painter thing can be done by double-clicking it at the start.


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## Gerald Higgins (Sep 3, 2008)

rorya said:


> The Format painter thing can be done by double-clicking it at the start.


Now I've learned something ! Thanks Rory !


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## riaz (Sep 4, 2008)

And I.  Thank you Rory.

I have a memory, but seeing as it is now in the dim dark recesses of my mind, I may be totally talking through a hat (I don't have one, so it might be someone else's hat).

I seem to recall that if you had a target sheet where you had certain locked cells, you could copy data from a source sheet and paste over the target sheet, and your data would drop into all the unlocked cells, but your locked cells with formulae would be untouched.  Excel stops at the first occurrence of a locked cell, curls up in a sulk and won't go any further.

I miss that a lot (not the sulking - the pasting).  Or is it just my memory and wishful thinking?


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## SydneyGeek (Sep 4, 2008)

I only used Lotus briefly when I was forced to -- after getting used to Excel -- and I found a lot of it to be pretty similar. 
Never got a chance to play with the keystroke macro language but absolutely hated LotusScript. It looked like VBA but had nowhere near the depth of object model and I found myself going around in circles, trying to do stuff that was a snack in Excel. 
In the end I installed a copy of Office (illegally, because IBM didn't allow it on site) so I could do my job.

Denis


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## Thorin (Sep 4, 2008)

I must admit, I really miss the floating properties box as well.

Another one that I seem to remember, was that you were not limited to 7 nested IF's. the only limitation (if I remember correctly) was that you could only use 256 characters.


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## Oaktree (Sep 4, 2008)

> 1) Turning 2 into 2+2
> If your cell contains 2, and you want to change it to 2+2 (and yes, I know, that's a really horrible way of doing it, but sometimes it's a useful quick fix), in Lotus, it was simply {f2}+2. The cell stored 2+2, and displayed 4, which could be used in further calculations. Try that in Excel, and it turns it into a text string of 2+2, which is useless in further calculations. If you want the numeric value, you have to insert an = at the beginning, in other words, {f2}{home}={end}+2



To be fair, if you check tools --> options --> transition --> "Transition formula entry", you can get that same functionality in Excel.


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## Gerald Higgins (Sep 4, 2008)

Thanks Oaktree, I've learned something else !

Maybe I should re-name this thread "Reasons why Lotus seemed to be better than Excel, due to user's ignorance" or something similar


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## Domski (Sep 4, 2008)

What's Lotus?


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## RoryA (Sep 4, 2008)

*L*oads
*O*f
*T*rouble
*U*sually
*S*erious


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## DominicB (Sep 4, 2008)

Oaktree said:


> To be fair, if you check tools --> options --> transition --> "Transition formula entry", you can get that same functionality in Excel.


But it plays havoc with your dates though ...
I discovered this option back in XL97 after years of Lotus use, and turned it off again about a minute later never to be used again.  I'd rather put up with the inconvenience of having to put an "=" before impromptu sums.

DominicB


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## Gerald Higgins (Sep 5, 2008)

> But it plays havoc with your dates though ...


In what way ? I've played around with it a little, and can't find anything wrong with dates.


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## Gerald Higgins (Sep 5, 2008)

I found what you mean. I had problems with times.


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## DreamAlchemist (Sep 9, 2008)

YOu can customize the default 56 colors by going tools options and then pick from the 16,777,216 colors available.


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## Gerald Higgins (Sep 9, 2008)

> YOu can customize the default 56 colors by going tools options and then pick from the 16,777,216 colors available.


 
er . . . didn't I say that in the OP ?


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## xenou (Sep 10, 2008)

I think I'd be happy with 128 colors - I'm always looking for a "shade in between" - something between those pastels and fluorescents.  I agree that I'd rather have more in-built colors - and I'd use custom colors more often if I knew they wouldn't be lost when the sheet is copied to a new workbook.

Alex


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## milesUK (Sep 12, 2008)

I found the rulers very useful; at the time we produced lots of printable forms with Lotus 123.

Another useful feature was the ability to print different ranges in one go on the same page ; that one I really miss. There is a workaround but it's not straighforaward.


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## DominicB (Sep 12, 2008)

Why does *everyone* refer to it as "Lotus", when the product name is actually 1-2-3?

Lotus (prior to its acquisition by IBM) was a company, so surely it's like referrring to Excel as "Microsoft" ... ?

DominicB


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## Domski (Sep 12, 2008)

DominicB said:


> Why does *everyone* refer to it as "Lotus", when the product name is actually 1-2-3?
> 
> Lotus (prior to its acquisition by IBM) was a company, so surely it's like referrring to Excel as "Microsoft" ... ?
> 
> DominicB


 
And a position prior to that


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## RoryA (Sep 12, 2008)

DominicB said:


> Why does *everyone* refer to it as "Lotus", when the product name is actually 1-2-3?
> 
> Lotus (prior to its acquisition by IBM) was a company, so surely it's like referrring to Excel as "Microsoft" ... ?
> 
> DominicB


 
Microsoft has been known to refer to Excel as 'Microsoft Office Excel'...


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## milesUK (Sep 12, 2008)

Dominic, you seem to have fallen into that trap yourself. 





DominicB said:


> I discovered this option back in XL97 after years of *Lotus* use, and turned it off again about a minute later never to be used again


I almost did - i only added the '123' as an afterthought.


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## DominicB (Sep 12, 2008)

DominicB said:


> Why does *everyone* refer to it as "Lotus", when the product name is actually 1-2-3?


Well spotted Miles - I did emphasize the "everyone" for a reason, but normally I do try and refer to it as 1-2-3, but am ashamed to say I slipped up on this occasion - and I can't even deny it

DominicB


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## milesUK (Sep 12, 2008)

"The person who never made a mistake never made anything!"

And on that basis my productivity should be sky high!


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