Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by beefield 2535 days ago
I have quite actively tried to avoid excel lately (which means also avoiding to learn new tricks...), and I am not that familiar with tables. Do the tables:

1. Enforce same data type per column. I.e., if you have a number in C4, you can't enter text into C5?

2. Enforce that if there is a formula, it is applied identically to each row?

(By enforcing I mean that there is _no_ way around that short of copying the data to new sheet)

Give me those two things (preferably within sheet context instead of table context) and a decent version control and I can reconsider that I do anything but disposable ad-hoc in excel again.
2 comments
function_seven 2535 days ago
Unfortunately the answer is "no" to both #1 and #2.

It does do something close to those. Column data types are automatically carried over to the next row when inserting or appending rows to an existing table. But you're free to override it if you want for a particular cell

Same with formulas. When you enter a formula in one cell, Excel will automatically copy across the whole column. But you're able to undo that auto copy if you really just want the formula in that one cell. It'll also flag cells that have inconsistent (compared to rest of table) formulas.

So, no, it doesn't enforce. But it does encourage.

link
LeonB 2535 days ago
The warning you receive when a formula is not consistent is a nice feature, and an advanced user will quickly learn to be very sensitive to those warnings, will spot them quickly, and avoid causing them when possible.

To strictly enforce that the formula must be the same in each cell of the column would not be very excel-like, I can't see it being done.

link
beefield 2535 days ago
> advanced user

Yep, the problem is that I have this conspiracy theory that Microsoft has designed Excel to be the ultimate booster of Dunning-Krueger effect so that most people think they are advanced users [1] while they actually have no clue what they are doing. All the while giving no protection whatsoever against those Dunning-Krueger cases.

[1] I am very much afraid I belong to this group.

link
viraptor 2535 days ago
1. Not enforced as far as I can tell. But I believe the formatting can be set per-column only, not per-cell inside the table.

2. It's a default formula that gets repeated, but you may be able to override.

link