I don’t like it when people send me Excel files with links to other Excel files that they did not include.
Word!
Yeah… Excel Mac (2011 is good) does it all the time (every workbook is in a separate window).
It took me a while to figure out that sometimes Windows has every workbook in one window and sometimes separate windows for each workbook. It took a long time via trial and error, I figured out CVM’s advice too.
I feel that for a product that has been around for about 20 years, the graphing/charting capabilities should be more developed. It’s not bad for simple bar charts or line graphs, but I wish it were easier to control chart formatting and such when you need to switch axes and stuff.
Also, in the jump from Excel 2003 to 2007, the default graphics settings worstened considerably. Line charts have lines the size of traffic markings, shadings that print terribly in black and white.
One thing that annoys the heck out of me is how to annotate charts. Point out a market event and label it. Getting a text box into excel is non-obvious, and I frequently have to go look up online to remember how to do it.
Because nobody in my firm uses Excel. They don’t know how.
And since they don’t know how, they assume that I don’t know how, either.
See the “Smartest Person and Excel” thread.
This one.
2 most hyped days when the team I’m on was coming up:
freestyle Fridays
mousefree Mondays (I literally took newer analysts mice and put them shits in a drawer)
This too, charting in excel is a joke. Unless all you want is a simple data on X, data on Y, pretty color kind of chart you’re SOL.
The Help feature.
I hate when some one sends me the model and it is in Excel and not Numpy/R
bad don’t last forever.
Anyone else using Office 2013? I’m loving excel and the charting is way sicker, esp combining multiple types of charts into one chart- the custom feature makes this 10x easier. I got a copy from work for 10 bucks.
I have a pet peeve of getting files designed by old guys who use + instead of = in the workbook. Also, I hate hard coding. But I use the “View Formulas” feature to find hard coded things.
And thanks for all the Excel tips. I’ve learned a thing or two in here.
I’m using Office 2011 for Mac, which is basically like office 2010 for Windows, and - graphically speaking - isn’t much different than Office 2007.
I’ll have to take a look at Office 2013 to see if it really is better on the graphing part.
As for Pivot tables, I used to find the things confusing, but once I realized that this is just another name for “Crosstabulation” in other statistical packages, plus a little gimmick about dragging columns around to make things “pivot,” it all fell into place.
That used to bug me, but then I’ve started doing it myself lol. Depending what I’m doing, it’s quicker to just use your right hand on the numpad (thumb on the arrows) and punch out formula’s that way, rather than constantly reaching over to the equals button.
I do wish excel would automatically change the leading + to an = though.
my dad does the “+” thing…always bothered me.
My Excel 2010 changes the + to = after you are done typing the formula. Is this not the case for other people?
Me too. I’m using 2013.
I just tried it and it converts on mine too. I think it occurs when opening an Excel file created on an earlier version of Excel.
I’m still on '07 at work, so that’s probably why.
The dash or minus sign “-” has the same effect as = and + on excel. At one point I was trying to do a kind of text outline in Excel and kept wondering why I got errors in those cells. The reason: my - signs were being interpreted as minus, rather than dashes.
Or maybe it wasn’t an outline exactly, I think I was cutting and pasting some stuff in there and there were dashes at the beginning
If it hadn’t been for that and about 20 mins of “WTF?”, I wouldn’t even know about the + thing, which presumably is a holdover from when some spreadsheets were imported from Lotus 123 (which I think used the + and - syntax more regularly).