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by Telaneo 143 days ago
Excel is really good for the wizards and for that one spreadsheet full of macros written by a wizard, which thus can't be ported over to Libreoffice or anything else. Many of those probably should Just™ be made into actual databases, but Excel is a lot more approachable than those, so you end up with giant spreadsheets instead.

For everybody else, Libreoffice is fine as far as functionality is concerned. UI might be another story, but that's worth getting over anyway, especially since a lot of people for whom this is a problem, would also have problems with getting away from Windows as a whole, just from buttons moving and things being different in general.
2 comments
wolvoleo 143 days ago
> Excel is really good for the wizards and for that one spreadsheet full of macros written by a wizard, which thus can't be ported over to Libreoffice or anything else. Many of those probably should Just™ be made into actual databases, but Excel is a lot more approachable than those, so you end up with giant spreadsheets instead.

Yes!! Misusing Excel as a database is really part of the problem. It also causes so many issues. Having multiple data elements within one cell. Someone overtyping a formula in a column of 200.000 values leading to one cell no longer being updated. Needing 32GB of RAM just to edit a spreadsheet with a measly 500.000 rows.

All stuff that never would happen with a real database. Microsoft never really put much effort into making Access approachable.

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iberator 143 days ago
You could do this in Pandas with Python under like 400mb of ram
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astrospective 143 days ago
Porting involved Excel sheets into web apps has been a decent chunk of my dev career.
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mmooss 143 days ago
What works best in those situations, in your experience?

Do you recreate a spreadsheet, use an existing online service, and/or create a database with proper logic, etc.? If the latter, how do users handle the UI change, and can they have an ease of creation similar to what Excel provides?

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midoBB 143 days ago
In my experience it's mostly about understanding business requirements of people using said excel sheets and then replicating it to CRUD WebApps while keeping capabilities of importing said sheets and exporting them so user flows are unharmed till a wholesale transition is mandated.

Good source of money for contractors as OP said.

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