Do you have any Excel OCD habits?

[RoryA]

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.

It's not just you. He seems to think that shorter is necessarily better (amongst his other delusions) and doesn't see how it's incredibly unhelpful to give code like that to people who don't know what they are doing with VBA. The irony of his signature is inescapable too.

 

[Domski]

The irony of his signature is inescapable too.

Indeed!

Dom

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

There are definitely a number of peope that believe the shorter the code the better. But often efficiency comes by adding a few extra lines, and sometimes a few extra lines makes it so much easier to follow.

The same applies to formula. I have learned the hard way that often a stepped approach so much better than a double-jointed nested formula. By the hard way I mean I have paid the price when I have had to amend my own spreadsheets and then had to unwravel my own formula.

 

[cornflakegirl]

But a few of the really complicated ones are quite handy in terms of job security

 

[Richard Schollar]

But a few of the really complicated ones are quite handy in terms of job security

That is so true

 

[RoryA]

Not really - by the time they work out you're indispensable, they've already got rid of you...

 

[HalfAce]

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

AT BIRTH!


Not to mention those 30 yard long Offset, R1C1, STDEVP formulas.

Gotta love being asked to unravel some ignorantly convoluted Index/Match STDEVP formula with 64 nested IFs that some goof wrote and says "it was working just fine but now it 'doesn't work...' "

 

[cornflakegirl]

Not really - by the time they work out you're indispensable, they've already got rid of you...

I found maternity leave quite handy here - my cover was done by someone who thought that advanced Excel was knowing how to create a pivot table - very gratifying to have people genuinely miss you

 

[JamesW]

who thought that advanced Excel was knowing how to create a pivot table

You mean it isn't?! Crap, I need to change my CV.

 

[diddi]

So is there possibly anything left to be OCD about? You've got all mine, well the top 50 or so.

Prolly all I could add is to point out is my abhorance of "the meddling boss" or "aspiring underling" who hacks your sheets when your not around and then wonders why, a week later, something doesn't work. then it takes hours of tracing to find an utterly illogical error that one would never concieve of even if intoxicated.