• bobzer@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    Excel is the biggest hurdle to overcome. No other spreadsheet software comes close to providing the same amount of features and functionality.

    • fierysparrow89@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      So I keep hearing… Yet, I’m having a hard time believing that most people are even aware of those fancy features, let alone use any of them.

      I accept that there are important models implemented as excel sheets. Reimplementing or even attempting to migrate away is viewed as risk. But this is a different argument.

    • turboSnail@piefed.europe.pub
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      1 day ago

      Can confirm! Calc is fine as long as you’re not trying to do anything too advanced. Then again, when you bump into those limits, you might want to consider switching to R or Python anyway. Excel just allows you to delay that inevitability a little bit longer.

      • Ferk@lemmy.ml
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        17 hours ago

        I mean, you can run python (or their own language “LibreOffice Basic”) from within a Libreoffice Calc sheet.

        Calc’s scripting is actually more powerful than the aging VBA thing Excel uses for macros, imho.

        • turboSnail@piefed.europe.pub
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          9 hours ago

          Very interesting… I guess my calculations can be supercharged while still technically remaining in the realm of a spreadsheet.

          Hopefully Python still runs with its usual consistency. VBA is a total nightmare in this regard. The code can randomly throw some useless error for no obvious reason. You can run the same code a few hours later and everything works perfectly even though you didn’t change anything. Can’t really use anything that unstable for anything serious.

      • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        This is the real thing of it. By the time you reach that you shouldn’t be using a damn spreadsheet program.

        At least for greenfield set it up right now. There’s plenty of actual programs that do things theyre supposed to.