Most active commenters
  • lysace(4)

←back to thread

Ireland’s Diarmuid Early wins world Microsoft Excel title

(www.bbc.com)
280 points 1659447091 | 12 comments | 20 Dec 25 19:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.666s | source | bottom
Show context
jjmarr ◴[20 Dec 25 20:27 UTC] No.46339337[source]▶
Does Microsoft gain useful information about product UX from this? Wondering if any Excel PMs watch this and see where micro-optimizations are made.
replies(1): >>46339675 #
1. lysace ◴[20 Dec 25 21:11 UTC] No.46339675[source]▶
Excel was completed at least a decade ago (probably two).

This is obviously 99% marketing. Microsoft/Waggener Edstrom tend to be really good at getting mainstream media to report on the marketing activities.

Example: For many Windows launches since Windows 3/95, there's been this media splash where Microsoft spends x million dollars on marketing and mainstream media then reports this, thereby getting (like) 100x millions worth of exposure.

replies(5): >>46340506 #>>46340979 #>>46341100 #>>46341298 #>>46341972 #
2. eszed ◴[20 Dec 25 23:01 UTC] No.46340506[source]▶
Excel is not "complete" until they stop forcibly converting long strings of numbers into scientific notation - or at least give me a sheet-specific way to turn it off. I know how to stop it on my machine, but I have shared documents where if any one of the 16+ other users forgets, then it's messed up for everyone.

Let alone the date issues.

At one point I did a deep dive on one or the other of these "quirks", and the earliest request for exactly the fix I want is from nineteen-eighty-fricking-five. Unbelievable.

replies(1): >>46340624 #
3. lysace ◴[20 Dec 25 23:17 UTC] No.46340624[source]▶
Yes, there will be edge cases. They need to balance historic compat vs one more fricking setting checkbox. I am thinking that you will never see this solved.
4. ciupicri ◴[21 Dec 25 00:11 UTC] No.46340979[source]▶
From 2020: "Scientists rename human genes to stop MS Excel from misreading them as dates" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24070385)
replies(1): >>46341060 #
5. lysace ◴[21 Dec 25 00:23 UTC] No.46341060[source]▶
Exactly. They couldn't really change it even if they wanted to. The implementation with all of its warts and quirks is now the standard.
replies(1): >>46341106 #
6. mmooss ◴[21 Dec 25 00:29 UTC] No.46341100[source]▶
> Excel was completed at least a decade ago (probably two).

What does that mean? Microsoft stopped developing new features? You think it was feature-complete?

replies(1): >>46345653 #
7. jsmith99 ◴[21 Dec 25 00:31 UTC] No.46341106{3}[source]▶
They've now made a change in that at least when you open a csv it now asks you beforehand if you want your data transformed, eg converting strings to numbers where that loses leading zeros.
8. ◴[21 Dec 25 01:11 UTC] No.46341298[source]▶
9. emeril ◴[21 Dec 25 03:26 UTC] No.46341972[source]▶
def 2 decades - 2023 was the best version and it has been downhill ever since

I'll admit, on occasion having more than 65k rows is helpful but generally that's the domain of a database, not excel and it wasn't a good tradeoff IMO

replies(1): >>46342028 #
10. lysace ◴[21 Dec 25 03:36 UTC] No.46342028[source]▶
*2003, probably?
replies(1): >>46346516 #
11. chungy ◴[21 Dec 25 15:52 UTC] No.46345653[source]▶
The entire Microsoft Office suite pretty much had every feature that users need by 1997. It's just been UI refreshes ever since.
12. KellyCriterion ◴[21 Dec 25 17:36 UTC] No.46346516{3}[source]▶
not OP, but yes - the limit was raised long time ago