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From: -hh <recscuba_google@huntzinger.com>
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-11,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: The problem with not owning the software
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2024 19:08:00 -0500
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On 12/29/24 4:00 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On 29 Dec 2024 16:39:41 GMT, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> 
>>    And of course I still get the occasional .doc[x] attachment from
>> someone who only *needs* a note-taking program, but only *has* (or knows
>> how to use) Word. Luckily my current Windows 11 seems to grok such
>> files, at least I didn't have to install LibreOffice since I got it,
>> over two years ago. Knock on wood.
> 
> That's my annoyance with Excel. Any xls document I've ever gotten was a
> freeform notepad with handy rows. I can't recall ever getting a xls where
> there were any manipulations on the cells. When all you know how to use is
> a hammer...

That's a very common 'organizer' use case.

I have some analytically based Excel stuff; it can get involved to build 
in certain types of logic (like "last entry" instead of "MAX").  Ditto 
for cell formatting which doesn't break from "divide by [no data]". I 
don't know how many cells it is, but a couple are over 1MB in size, 
including one with 21 tabs plus links to pull in data from other 
spreadsheets.

I have a colleague who's done some amazing stuff in Excel using Visual 
Basic Script (VBS); the PC I had at the time would fail just trying to 
load the files; his beefy machine he had would take literally hours to 
crunch through a set.  A quick search shows that I still have an older 
copy: it takes up 14.34GB on disk. Youch.


-hh