Mr Excel, other forums and general Excel forum history

[Domski]

I'm not even sure why I'm writing this but here goes...

I can't recall exactly when and why I came across Mr Excel. I think originally I was bored whilst waiting to be made redundant from GE a few years ago and thought I'd have a butchers at t'interweb to see what was out there. I'd never had a pc at home at the time, wouldn't normally have been surfing and my knowledge of Excel being a bit crap at the time was interested to see what was out there.

A few years have gone by and I find myself straying onto here on a regular basis either to work out how to do stuff or pass on some of my relatively limited knowledge.

Anyway, getting on towards the point...I've become over the years more aware of other forums out there, whose names I won't mention, that when I don't find a specific answer on here I will happen upon (usually through Google). I have during this time noticed a few familiar names popping up and although I have joined a couple have never found one that I have ever actively participated in.

The reason I've stuck with this forum is that I've generally found it to be an exceptionally useful resource with some of the best 'brains' I've ever had the privilege to associate with. It's also without exception an extremely friendly environment and, bar one exception where Richard Schollar had to intervene as I virtually wanted to smack someone in the chops, I've never had a cross word to say to anyone when some others have a far less friendly feel about them.

Where the hell am I going with this (promise I'll get there eventually)?

What I'd be interested in is a little history lesson and some thoughts about others experiences...

• Which was the first of the big Excel forums?
• Was there once 'one' and have they split over the years?
• Do folk generally register and participate on multiple forums?
• Is this the main one they use or contribute to?
• What are people's experiences of some of the other forums (keep it clean)?
• Are there any good features of other forums that folk think could be well incorporated into this site to improve it?
• Would any big brains like to lend me theirs for the next 25 years so I can stop mine hurting so much when I read your posts?

I'm going to stop now and go and find my wagon. I'm pretty sure it's got a bottle of wine stashed on it somewhere...

Laters,

Dom

 

[Michael M]

Hi Dom
I think I found your bottle of wine.....I used it ( and a couple of others ) last night.
I am subscribed to a couple of Forums. The main reason being that I sometimes find the others have simpler ( basic) requests that I can understand. This means I have the opportunity to participate and learn a bit more often.
Having said that, my limited skills have been enhanced enormously since coming to Mr Excel.
I know ALL of my problems have been answered quickly, profesionally and efficiently on this site and every now and then I get to put a bit back.

I don't know who was first, but this site seems to have their s#@t together more so that the others.

Regards
Michael M

 

[NateO]

Hi Dom,

Interesting post. Let's see if I can speak to it from my perspective. I stumbled into MrExcel.com in, what, 2001? I'm not sure why I stumbled into it, I was conducting some heavy-duty Excel research at the time, I was writing some pretty serious applications for American Express.

In any event, here was this Q&A Forum, interesting. I read a question, I knew the answer, so I posted it. The old board software was much different then, it looked exactly like this:

http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=170&f=3054

You know, minus the colours and whatnot, I think it was blue and white. In 2002 Bill upgraded to PHP and totally reconfigured his efforts, and things really got rolling from there. I was quite shocked to see the new version, to be quite honest. His version of the story can be found here:

http://www.mrexcel.com/meetmrexcel.shtml

Onto your other questions. The original place to go for Excel help? The Newsgroups, their servers are actually owned by Microsoft. Something to do with Compuserve, originally? Before my time, I'm not so much of a Newsgroup guy.

The first big web-based Excel forum? Someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I'm going to guess Hans Herber's site? Which is German. It's been around for a long time:

http://xlforum.herber.de/

Wow, he has the same old-time Forum format! There's a blast from the past.

With the erruption of web-based Forums, a fairly recent phenomenon, no, there wasn't a splitting of the great one. Many arose from the ashes and the best ones simply grew at a faster rate than others. In our case, much faster.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that people probably do hang out in different forums for different purposes. I hang out in a different forum geared towards sports, and another geared towards my vehicle, etc... I roam around quite a bit, for different reasons, and specific ones in the cases of some forums.

MrExcel.com always has been and always will be my home, but I travel quite a bit, too. My experience has been great, I've forged some pretty great relationships along the way, I'm friends with many Access MVPs and spent quite a bit of time with them at last year's Microsoft MVP Summit, in Seattle.

I also try to take what I consider to be best in class in other forums and incorporate it into the teamwork that goes on here in terms of forum Administration and Moderation.

I think our Forums run at a very high level and it's a tremendous community we have, but still, it's always a work in progress, you know? We're not finished, we're building.

So, there's my perspective. Good hunting.

 

[Domski]

Cheers Nate, interesting read.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that people probably do hang out in different forums for different purposes. I hang out in a different forum geared towards sports, and another geared towards my vehicle, etc... I roam around quite a bit, for different reasons, and specific ones in the cases of some forums.

I guess when I meant other forums I guess I meant Excel or MS software related but I get your meaning.

It's interesting to hear how folk ended up here.

Personally I was totally PC illiterate other than playing games on my Spectrum, C64 and Amiga and only 'discovered' Excel when I was working as a temp in a payroll office and had no filing to do. The boss said to me could I try and work out some way to calculate UK tax without using the tables the Inland Revenue supplied so folk could check stuff outside of the really old DOS database that they used to process wages. It took me months and looking back it was a really clunky effort but it was all my own work and it did actually come up with the results.

The rest as they say is (a long and painful) history.

Dom

 

[kgkev]

I'm quite new but I was a member of a another forum that was helping a lot with simple formulas and formula debugging.

however when I can to need a bit of VBA help. (I say help but I didn't have a clue where to start) they couldn't help either.

So I ended up here and had an answer from Anthony47 in less than 1 hour.

He then continued to help for a couple of days and even about a month after that he helped modify the macro so it worked slightly differently.

every question I have asked has been answered quickly and correctly which is why I have stuck around.

I've even helped answer a few questions as well - Simple one but I think they helped someone.

 

[Richard Schollar]

I came across MrExcel in 2005 - before that I didn't even know Excel forums existed. I thought I was good with Excel before I arrived here - boy was I in for a rude awakening!

I personally like MrExcel.com because it is by far and away the friendliest Excel forum I have visited. You won't get burned for a spelling mistake in your thread title or for a title that is less descriptive than it could have been (although you may not get a reply quite so fast if this is the case!). Also, unlike virtually every other Excel forum out there, you won't be run out of town for cross-posting (although we do appreciate it if a link to the cross-post is given). You also won't get abused if you ask a question that has been asked 000s of times before (this I hate the most about certain other forums - repetition breeds experience and thus improves the Excel skills of us all - something which the grandees of certain other forums are either too blinkered to realise, or just don't care).

I do post at other forums, but not as much as here.

 

[schielrn]

You won't get burned for a spelling mistake in your thread title.

Unless Emma sees it.

I started working with Excel in late 2006 for the first time. I had done some programming prior to using Excel and I felt that helped a lot with VBA. 80% of my first answers I posted for people were probably VBA related as I felt more comfortable with that.

I joined the board after I had a question to one of my collegues and he didn't have the answer and told me to check out this site. So I posed the question and after posting I thought a few minutes later I'd just check to see if there was an answer because I'm the type of person that wanted an answer for a question yesterday. And to my surprise within 5 minutes I had 2 people with an answer for my question (Jonmo and Erik). I thought this site was great. Also I never did thank them for their response. Then a month later I was asking to create a macro to move tabs not knowing there was a shortcut. I probably created 15 macros for things that have a shortcut key not knowing it.

Thanks Jonmo and Erik for answering my first question, since it is proper etiquette.

I look back at some of the code when I started this job compared to my code now and just laugh at myself because it is filled with select statements and for loops that have hard-coded end points and just exit on certain conditions rather than specifying it. I have learned so much from this board and am glad to have given back some of my knowledge as well.

I feel the community is very friendly and helpful. It seems that you can come on here and talk about almost anything and someone else can relate to it.

I also just want to send out a thanks to everyone on the board.

 

[DonkeyOte]

My profile tells me I joined Sep 7, 2002... I can't recall how I stumbled upon Mr E (this was before StumbleUpon FF add-in!) and I can't find my first ever post to see if it was a question or (attempted) answer...

I took a break from Mr E for around three years as my main focus moved from being XL to the net but I looked in every now and then and in June this year on leaving my old job I came back with a vengeance (poor code & lots of spelling mistakes!).

I have been a member on a number of other forums over the last 6 years or so but find Mr E far and away the best to navigate, personable and with the best "resources" available...

As most of us know each of the "other" sites has it's hardcore of experts but the number of experts here outweighs those on other sites and the skill level of the general Mr E populace far exceeds the other sites. The only down side can be there aren't enough questions sometimes! Particularly once our friends in the States come online in the afternoon ... at which point it becomes a bit of a piranha-esque frenzy!!

More questions!!

Incidentally I'd like to thank the likes of (apologies for missing people out):

Aladin, PGC, Oaktree, Richard S, Andrew P, Barry H, Fazza, Rory, Peter S, Andrew F, Jonmo, Norie, Jindon, Tushar & Nate.

Without these guys this place would be mediocre... knowing there's a definitive answer out there makes this resource the best Excel resource out there.

 

[cornflakegirl]

Unless Emma sees it. .

I love this place. I've never hung around the other forums long enough to find out what they're like - but I didn't need to hang around here to find out what it was like. It was obvious straight away that it was a great place. And free - thanks Bill!

Oh, and I'd second what Luke said - thanks to all of you who stick around just to dish out advice - I'm really grateful! (And thanks to you too, Luke )

 

[RoryA]

For my part, I am a member of 4 Excel/VBA related forums (I have registered on more, but the others don't count as I didn't stay there very long!). One of the 4 I visit occasionally, with the others I try and divide my time evenly, though I help moderate one so I have to pay a bit more attention there!
The one thing they all have in common is a friendly atmosphere, which is why I'm still there.
The only thing I can think of offhand that I haven't noticed here (and I'm still relatively new, so I may just not have noticed it) is a Knowledgebase facility to bookmark posts you know will be useful in future (hopefully someone will point me to it!)