Most common & most unusual forms of Excel abuse?

[DonkeyOte]

Luke,

Access, at least, is included in Office Professional and Office Ultimate. Visio is not in any of the office packages.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101635841033.aspx?ofcresset=1

Just goes to show how "frugal" my last place was ... we weren't allowed to develop with Access as we didn't have enough enough licences to distribute the application company wide ... well that was what they told me... ho hum... direct consequence of which however was turning to MySQL & learning asp so as they say "every cloud..." ... I know a lot of you love your Access ...

A question for those that use MS Access every day... do you think if your company were starting again from scratch today that they or indeed you would advocate Access over say a DB/webclient type approach ?

I've often wondered as to whether or not Access today is to some extent a legacy product and continues to exist because it is just too hard to contemplate transitioning existing applications from it... I know most major companies use it... I say all this having little experience of it other than a brief sojourn with Access2000 ... I'm sure things are very different now.

Sorry for the hijack...

Like everyone else -- XL being used as a db has to be the predominant flaw surely ?

 

[DonkeyOte]

I have not been around enough to see these abuses... but the funnist things I have seen excel used for is as a paper ledger.
I witnessed a person actually calculate a number with a tape calculater then input the result into excel..........

So in my case I would have ticked "they should have used a calculator"??

 

[arkusM]

I have not been around enough to see these abuses... but the funnist things I have seen excel used for is as a paper ledger.
I witnessed a person actually calculate a number with a tape calculater then input the result into excel..........

So in my case I would have ticked "they should have used a calculator"??

Actually thinking about, would a "they should have USED Excel" option be legite?

 

[Oorang]

How about Excel when you should have used project? It really is a better tool in many cases.

 

[SydneyGeek]

Just goes to show how "frugal" my last place was ... we weren't allowed to develop with Access as we didn't have enough enough licences to distribute the application company wide ... well that was what they told me... ho hum... direct consequence of which however was turning to MySQL & learning asp so as they say "every cloud..." ... I know a lot of you love your Access ...

A question for those that use MS Access every day... do you think if your company were starting again from scratch today that they or indeed you would advocate Access over say a DB/webclient type approach ?

I've often wondered as to whether or not Access today is to some extent a legacy product and continues to exist because it is just too hard to contemplate transitioning existing applications from it... I know most major companies use it... I say all this having little experience of it other than a brief sojourn with Access2000 ... I'm sure things are very different now.

Sorry for the hijack...

Like everyone else -- XL being used as a db has to be the predominant flaw surely ?

Certainly with the stuff I do, trying to turn Excel into a database is a major abuse.

And to answer some of the Access questions --
Whether you would start with Access or something else depends on what you need, and what expertise you can get your hands on. I've spent quite a bit of time over the past few years using Access to hold, or repurpose, forecast data that was generated in Excel or Cognos.
Access was always intended to be a workgroup-sized database, and it excels there is used properly (pun intended). Taking it to the enterprise level demands skills that your average Access dude won't necessarily have, but it makes a great front end for enterprise DBs like SQL Server.
And is it a legacy app? Not in my opinion. MS did a lot of work in Office 2007 turning it into the rich client for Sharepoint. That's a major part of Access' future but there will always be need for desktop databases, and Access does that job very well.

Re using Visio, that's my weapon of choice for flowcharts. It's got a bit of a learning curve so you don't go nuts, but it's very quick and does the job.
That said, if I'm just putting together something small I'll fire up Excel or Powerpoint.

Denis

 

[texasalynn]

I have never understood why Excel is used for letter writing. I have seen them use a text box that they sized to the precise area and then when the writing is beyond that size, they want to know what is wrong with Excel for not printing everything.

I agree about the abuse of Excel vs Access - but most companies won't fork over the $$$$$ to have it available.

Where I used to work we found a read-only Access, and so I was able to create forms so that everyone could use the database. Just no changes. Was pretty slick.

 

[mole999]

We have the full office suite for everyone, the IT department, don't like us developing anything, so software in place and freedom stifiled

 

[Peter_SSs]

I've used Excel as my webbrowser cos then it looks like I don't have tinternet open at work (well, in case anyone looks at my taskbar). It worked for a while before people realised I wasn't being quite as dedicated as they thought...

What trick do you use now? Must be somethin' 'cos your're here way too often when you should be working! At least that's what my emails to your boss are saying.

I have not been around enough to see these abuses...
I witnessed a person actually calculate a number with a tape calculater then input the result into excel

If it's only a person, then you're right - you haven't been around long enough! I've seen this quite a bit. I think the users think Excel just has grey lines everywhere so that you can line up numbers nicely - and you can put a nice straight line above your total!

Most common abuse where I work, is using Excel instead of Word, though at least I haven't noticed it being used for letter writing.

 

[Andrew Fergus]

Most common abuse where I work, is using Excel instead of Word, though at least I haven't noticed it being used for letter writing.

In addition to seeing used as a database, the 2nd most common abuse I see is using it as a letter writer. Very frustrating......

 

[RoryA]

Avoiding Access is the most common abuse I see, but my favourite is their avoidance of Outlook/Exchange. A bunch of our guys go to conferences quite regularly, and for each one the scheduling 'application' is an Excel workbook with one sheet for each day and lots of ridiculous macros and filters to try and produce reports for where each individual will be!
Of course, in a radical move to reduce productivity, we will apparently be switching to Notes this year, so maybe it does make sense for it to be in Excel...