What is the most frustrating thing about excel?

[Rick Rothstein]

My pet peeve is the Find/Replace dialog box. Why is there an "Options>>" button? I mean, once you click the "Options>>" button, the dialog box is quite small so there is no screen "real estate" issues requiring some of the dialog box to be compacted. Also, given that some of the items on that expanded dialog box are remembered from previous uses (whether those uses were made manually in a previous use of Find/Replace or via VBA code), one pretty much has to click the "Options>>" button anyway just to make sure one of those remembered settings doesn't conflict with the current needs. I know this is a small thing, but it really irks me, especially when answering a question and having to tell the OP to click the "Options>>" button in order to check the setting for (usually) the "Match entire cell contents" checkbox.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

I'll echo that Rick. I've been caught out before where I used VBA to change the settings and then become immensely frustrated trying to find a value using the UI - not clicking that it has changed the settings in the dialog too.

 

[J.Ty.]

1. Small window of "Evaluate Formula" (would it cost more to make it bigger or resizeable?)
2. Small and awkwardly unconvenient formula editors in Data Validation, Name Manager, Conditional Formatting and the like.

 

[Fazza]

Merged cells - not that I use them, but I sometimes get spreadsheets from other that have them in rows above a header row.

 

[Jon von der Heyden]

Merged cells - not that I use them, but I sometimes get spreadsheets from other that have them in rows above a header row.

Agreed

 

[Peter_SSs]

My pet peeve is the Find/Replace dialog box.

Agreed

1. Small window of "Evaluate Formula" (would it cost more to make it bigger or resizeable?)
2. Small and awkwardly unconvenient formula editors in Data Validation, Name Manager, Conditional Formatting and the like.

Agreed to both - especially the Evaluate Formula box. It is ridiculous!

I'm not so against merged cells. Whilst they are sometimes a problem, I believe they do have their place and mostly can be managed adequately in my experience.

 

[steve case]

For me, two things:

I don't like the way I have to scroll sheets using the two arrows, rather than a scrollbar. I like the right-click option however that provides a sheet navigation dialog, but I miss the old way of scrolling.

I don't like the behaviour of CONTROL+TAB. If I have three or more books open then it seems to toggle only between two books. It didn't behave this way in pre 2016 versions, if I recall correctly. Maybe I just need to flip a switch somewhere to change the behaviour?

I will also echo what Joe mentioned. I recently had to describe the difference between two balances - one being derived in Excel and the other in TM1. The difference was purely resultant of precision! It's also not fun trying to explain how the precision difference has come about!

On the plus side - I recall similar topics over the many years that I have been frequenting forums. Suffice to say that many things that we used to gripe about are no longer issues, such as repeating key values in Pivot Tables and a range of formulas. In particular, I find TEXTJOIN tremendously helpful. Excel continues to grow in leaps and bounds!

Oh isn't that ever the truth. If you're copying data from somewhere and you need to
---- Uh oh! You said [Ctrl-Tab] not the same as [Alt-Tab] which from some change that
maybe wasn't to Excel but maybe windows. When I want to [Alt-Tab] from Excel through
various tabs that I have open I have to [Alt-Tab][Alt-Tab] twice to get out of Excel and
into the rest of the tabs that I have open. It ruins your rhythm it does.

Getting rid of blank data that appears as zeroes in your graph is another annoying chore
when you deleted the no data place holder -9999 or whatever the originator of the data
decided to use.

Recently I find that the equation displayed on your graph i.e., y = 0.123x²- 456x + 789,
doesn't have a function, ƒx, for those three terms. Maybe on the next version (-:

And those G**D*** little yellow flags that cover up your data to tell you something about
some formula some where and you can't turn 'em off.

But the biggest annoyance is the Date Function. Down load some data off the net and
there in the middle a date instead of your number shows up. That has caused some
serious errors for me.

Not an Excel issue but those key board toggles [CapsLock], [NumLock], [ScrollLock]
and [Insert] can really screw things up. And the [Home] key doesn't go to [A1]. Oh
that is an Excel issue.

 

[ashakantasharma]

Large Excel Files gets easily corrupt.

 

[J.Ty.]

It seems that there are people for whom automatic conversion of strings into dates and/or numbers is a serious problem:

Mark Ziemann, Yotam Eren, and Assam El-Osta
Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature
Gene name errors are widespread in the scientific literature

Abstract tells it all:
The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions.

 

[Scott T]

Merged cells - not that I use them, but I sometimes get spreadsheets from other that have them in rows above a header row.

The report writer my work uses will merge cells when you export the report as Excel so it looks just like the PDF. Really annoying to have to unmerge and clean up the data all the time.