Is there a name for those people....

[xlHammer]

...who are completely Excel illiterate? You know, the ones who have been using Excel for 12 years and never once wondered what the 'AutoSum' button did. Or who look on you in amazement when you explain to them that vlookup can save them from printing off one spreadsheet and spending 3 hours keying all the data into another. I'm not talking about the ones that are keen to learn and experiment, just the ones that seem to have no curiosity at all about this thing they spend much of their working day using.

Is there a special name for them? I think there should be. Can someone come up with one?


Rob

 

[sweater_vests_rock]

...who are completely Excel illiterate? You know, the ones who have been using Excel for 12 years and never once wondered what the 'AutoSum' button did. Or who look on you in amazement when you explain to them that vlookup can save them from printing off one spreadsheet and spending 3 hours keying all the data into another. I'm not talking about the ones that are keen to learn and experiment, just the ones that seem to have no curiosity at all about this thing they spend much of their working day using.

Is there a special name for them? I think there should be. Can someone come up with one?


Rob

i tend to know about what i use in excel...so i have to say i'm not great with autosum myself. unless you have a good training course, or have a low threshold for pain, it probably makes sense that this happens. i mean, who but a lazy person when tasked with matching 5000 rows of data across worksheets would say "oh man, i gotta find a way to not do this."

ben.

 

[erik.van.geit]

Is there a special name for them? I think there should be. Can someone come up with one?

what about an ExsHole
(pronounce the E a little longer)
(for me it sounds funny, but English is not my native language)

 

[cornflakegirl]

I think they're called architects. One old boss used to do fee quotes in Excel, doing all the actual calculations with a calculator...

 

[Domski]

At work I call them Can'ts "Colleague(s) Against New Thoughts" and I have a whole section of them about twenty metres away from me.

I was asked to spend a week with them explaining how they could do things a lot more efficently using a couple of extra fairly basic functions in Excel and designing their spreadsheets a little better.

One lass who administers car loans to employees was filling in six different spreadsheets manually so that she could present the infomation in different ways and spent a fair proportion of her working day doing it. I helped her design a new sheet that held all the data and used pivot tabled to summarise the info but as soon as I left them alone she, and all her other colleagues, went right back to the way they did things before.

I was later told this was mainly because they were concerned that one of them might lose their job if it was found that had spare capacity.

 

[Cindy Ellis]

Hmm...I like Domski's acronym approach...it says so much with so little.
Until I read his reply I was thinking that the term could be "unemployed"...as in the applicant for a temporary position who classified herself as having intermediate to advanced Excel skills, whose most recent accomplishment in Excel was discovering that you could use Excel to add and subtract numbers!
On the other hand, if it weren't for some of them, I'd have a more difficult time passing myself off as guru at work

The group that's most frustrating to me are the ones who know a task could be simplified in Excel, but choose not to because they'd have to validate their worksheet or macro (I'm in a regulated industry that requires validation of software that automates "regulated activities"). Instead of taking a couple of hours to show that a worksheet or macro is built and protected correctly (and documenting their testing), they'll spend many hours (or days or weeks) repeating the same steps manually, with no verification at all that their manual steps have been done consistently or correctly.
Cindy

 

[Joe4]

Around here, we call them "Boss"!

 

[sweater_vests_rock]

Around here, we call them "Boss"!

haha

 

[mikerickson]

My father is the kind of man that used Excel years ago. He knows how to make it do what he wants it to (once he has found where #$%$@ Microsoft moved/hid the control) and has no interest in learning what "MicroSoft thinks is an easier way".

 

[Fazza]

Not a general term, but sometimes we have "secretaries" who fit that description. Some have been truly surprised to learn that a formula can be put in to add a column of numbers - means they no longer need to add up the numbers on a calculator and type the result into the cute little rectangle.

Other secretaries though have been highly competent with Excel & Word & Power Point & Access & Visio, etc, etc.