
Improving how we manage spreadsheet data - open-source-ux
https://dataingovernment.blog.gov.uk/2019/06/10/improving-how-we-manage-spreadsheet-data/
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rossdavidh
Spreadsheets are, in actual fact, the most widely used programming
environment, and the most approachable. Most programmer-developed systems are
less intuitive and less powerful than a hacky spreadsheet is to the office
that created it. I have often encountered other programmers who are somewhat
disdainful of user-developed spreadsheets, and I try not to have that
attitude. You have to be a top-notch programmer, with a keen interest in
understanding your users and their business needs, to do better than their
spreadsheet, hacky as it may well be.

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ABeeSea
For a spreadsheet power user, there is huge value in being able to reverse
engineer the logic in a series of calculations. It’s similar to looking at the
source code for a tool to understand its output. I’ve seen some monstrously
complicated sheets that with enough diligence you can see all the steps for
the final output.

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zokier
The CSV on the Web primer linked in the comments is pretty interesting too:

[https://w3c.github.io/csvw/primer/](https://w3c.github.io/csvw/primer/)

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myroon5
One of the worst aspects of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) is the
state of version control. There seem to be different Office offerings with
varying support for version control, but many of the experiences are terrible
in this respect.

Example: how can I quickly discern who changed an Excel formula and when in an
old version of Excel?

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kornish
Out of interest, what types of version control systems have you seen people
cobble together in the workplace, and to address what types of needs?

It's interesting to observe how banks and consultancies "version up"
spreadsheets and slide decks by copying the document (plus all supporting
documents) and incrementing a version in the name. And also interesting to
observe that's worked well enough for quite a long time.

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ant6n
Nowadays, SharePoint should help with version control. But it's an MS product,
so it doesn't work and people will just end up e-mailing each other
incremented versions.

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acidburnNSA
I've used SharePoint to collaboratively create and edit a few 50 page export
controlled (read: cloud not an option, at least back then and for cheap) Word
documents. It was surprisingly usable and worked fine. Everyone just used word
itself (not the web app) and things kept updating when we pressed the sync
button. Way better than like, confluence or that stuff.

I tried getting execs to use markdown and rst with git and phabricator for
version control/review/approval but just haven't succeeded yet.

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scottlamb
> On GOV.UK alone, we found 31,121 files with spreadsheet extensions (like
> .ods, .xlsx or .xls) and 19,251 CSV files, many of which were not in the
> suggested tidy, tabular data format.

Ugh. The linked wikipedia page [1] is bizarre. The "wide table" form is far
more practical than the "one possible tidy version": if you want to actually
compute something for each maker based on observations, you can do so easily.
And they don't describe at all why one might think the "one possible tidy
version" is superior. No wonder many of these files are not in the suggested
format; it's stupid.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tidy_data&oldid=9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tidy_data&oldid=903920411)

