Do you have any Excel OCD habits?

[Greg Truby]

...
RoadsData revision version 1 dated Friday 010110.xls
RoadsData revision version 2 dated Monday 040110.xls
RoadsData revision version 3 dated Tuesday 050110.xls
etc,etc,etc.

... plus the date, to give us a fighting chance of working out which of the seven versions is the right one to look at.

I don't mind a bit of length in a file name. I don't mind embedding a date in the name. But, if yer gonna put a date in the name then fer heaven's sake, use an intelligent format. In the U.S. you usually see

• MyFile 11-22-2010.xlsx
• MyFile 12-22-2010.xlsx
• MyFile 01-22-2011.xlsx

which sorts all wrong in Windows Explorer. For some reason it appear to be exceedingly difficult for people to use a format that would sort properly...

• MyFile 2010-11-22.xlsx
• MyFile 2010-12-22.xlsx
• MyFile 2011-01-22.xlsx

 

[Domski]

I guess some of you won't like my file names then e.g.:

Smith P - Childrens Services Equality Data - Apr to Sep 2010 @ 27-10-10.xls

Dom

 

[Atroxell]

Ok. All of you have to come out from behind your psuedonyms and admit what department in my company you work for.... I swear, I have seen every single one of the formatting comments listed above in a single workbook not of my creation--you must work here somewhere to have seen this!

Who on Earth feels that a bright yellow background fits well on the same sheet as a bright red and a bright green background with blue text? And has anyone tried to print this worksheet before they distribute it? My eyes are bad enough to need glasses, but I don't need any help with destroying my retinas.

 

[JamesW]

Those file names are tiny compared to the ones I see at work:

OTIF File v2.2 12/12/2009 14:00PM AndrewW rev 2.3.xls
OTIF File v2.23 12/01/2010 4:51PM AndrewW rev 2.4412.xls
OTIF File v2.2331.2 12/02/2010 10:12:33PM AndrewW rev 2.12AB.22.a.xls

I understand that you made a TINY change, but seriously...

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

I have another one, this time VBA related.

I hate heavily commented code. I sometimes see code that has a comment for almost every line of code. If you can't understand VBA, then your probably shouldn't be tampering with it. My commenting pretty much extends to a line or two at the top of each procedure broadly explaining what it does.

So my OCD habit is to avoid comments throughout my code religiously!

 

[JamesW]

Haha, yeah. I've seen comments that actually explain that there is a new line:

Sub hello() 'this is the start of the sub called hello
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
''' CREATED BY BOB '''
'''                         '''
''' COPYRIGHT 2010 '''
''' V 122.21.1.03333'''
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
 
    msgbox "Hello" 'This is a message box that says hello.
' This is a blank line, and seperates code but doesn't actually do anything
' So is this.
End Sub 'This ends the sub.

 

[Domski]

Dashboards that are made to look like a car dashboard complete with speedometer and fuel gauge etc

Dom

 

[RoryA]

People who think that code should be as short and unintelligible as possible, should be shot.

 

[Domski]

People who think that code should be as short and unintelligible as possible, should be shot.

Hmmm, I can think of one regular'ish contributor to another forum I frequent that almost always posts code which takes me an age to understand when an extra couple of lines would have made it so straightforward. It could just be me being a bit thick though.

Dom

 

[JamesW]

We once had a competition in college to program a lighting christmas tree in Java in the fewest number of lines.

I didn't win, even though mine was all on one line (I cheated).