Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Are the posted questions getting worse?

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Thom A SSC Guru Points: 99130 More actions · Answer 1

Phil Parkin wrote:

As almost everyone on this forum knows, Excel is a numerical analysis tool, and should not be used as a database in any professional situation.

Why I think everyone on this forum will almost always ask for a CSV file for data; then we have control over the data types and processing choices of the Extraction Process. For the last time ACE, no, just because the first 10 rows have a numerical value doesn't mean that the column is a float! >_< Stop Assuming my column's ~~gender~~ data type; you're not allowed to do that in 2020.

Thom~

Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004340 More actions · Answer 2

jonathan.crawford wrote:

How would Microsoft actually handle this case though, without disabling the ability to convert MAR1 into the 1st of March for the rest of the users? If the trick would be to format the column for genetics or something, there are already formatting options that negate that activity. This action is probably useful to a large number of users, although I don't use it myself.
I think this is much ado about nothing on the part of the scientists. If they are too careless to format the spreadsheets correctly (like the rest of us have to do to preserve leading zeroes, etc. in daily work) then they have no excuse.

Heh... it just wouldn't be that difficult to have a button in the ribbon bar to temporarily disable auto-magic date conversions BUT, you've hit the other nail on the head. Even scientists don't necessarily take the time to learn the tools they supposedly depend on. That's a part of my OMG factor at reading this article.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

WayneS SSC Guru Points: 95460 More actions · Answer 3

Hey Lynn,

Sorry to hear about your impending doom. Now that you know how to search within your company, hope that you can get something.

In addition to all the great advice given, I'll offer one more. Go on every interview that you can... even if you know that you don't want / will not accept that job. This gives great experience in those job interviews. Nothing relaxes you more in an interview than knowing that you wouldn't take this job, and all you want is this interview experience.

Wayne
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008
Author - SQL Server T-SQL Recipes

If you can't explain to another person how the code that you're copying from the internet works, then DON'T USE IT on a production system! After all, you will be the one supporting it!

Links:
For better assistance in answering your questions
Performance Problems
Common date/time routines
Understanding and Using APPLY Part 1 & Part 2

Robert Sterbal SSChampion Points: 11050 More actions · Answer 4

In nearly 30 years of using excel there are very few situations that don't have a straight forward work around.

412-977-3526 call/text

Greg Edwards-268690 SSC-Insane Points: 20680 More actions · Answer 5

Take a pdf of your monthly credit card statement, and use Adobe to convert it to Excel.

Then see what it takes to clean it up. Getting rid of the graphics is just a couple lines of code. The rest is a bit more challenging to get to just the cards used, date, where, and amount. Where my wife works, they usually need 24 months of this information in Excel to categorize for divorce mediation.

Initially, she thought it would be easy to copy and paste rather than key all this in. The first cell with data was 30 lines of data in one cell. Then there were merged cells, where when you removed the merging, resulted in data not always in the same column, plus varying columns being blank.

I got a nice little side job parsing this apart and making it usable. Faster and more consistent than keying it in. And with quick turnaround, they can take short notice cases they used to turn away.

Since some of this formatting is likely due to Excel ‘helping’ the user, it is a feature that works for me.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004340 More actions · Answer 6

Robert Sterbal wrote:

In nearly 30 years of using excel there are very few situations that don't have a straight forward work around.

Heh... I look at it another way...

In more than 30 years of using Excel, I've found there are very few situations that don't require a work around. 😀

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

jonathan.crawford SSCertifiable Points: 6612 More actions · Answer 7

Excel: enable bad solutions

Access: implement bad solutions that require other bad solutions in order to function

PowerBI: Automate all the bad solutions with a bad process, and call it "data science"

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x SSC-Insane Points: 23660 More actions · Answer 8

I particularily enjoy pasting dates into excel, sort of like a box of chocolates ...

Robert Sterbal SSChampion Points: 11050 More actions · Answer 9

It takes less than 10 keystrokes to convert a column to text. (Ctrl + space, alt + 1, alt + C, t, t enter)

I'm getting the impression that you think a product for hundreds of millions of users has to work the way you want it to. If it doesn't, the product is bad.

412-977-3526 call/text

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398882 More actions · Answer 10

x wrote:

I particularily enjoy pasting dates into excel, sort of like a box of chocolates ...

Spring Surprise or Lamb's Bladder Cup?

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt

Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004340 More actions · Answer 11

Robert Sterbal wrote:

I'm getting the impression that you think a product for hundreds of millions of users has to work the way you want it to. If it doesn't, the product is bad.

Heh... Correct! 😀

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

Thom A SSC Guru Points: 99130 More actions · Answer 12

Robert Sterbal wrote:

It takes less than 10 keystrokes to convert a column to text. (Ctrl + space, alt + 1, alt + C, t, t enter)
I'm getting the impression that you think a product for hundreds of millions of users has to work the way you want it to. If it doesn't, the product is bad.

10~ key strokes to do that is a lot of key strokes in my mind. This is actually one of those times where it's actually probably quicker and easier to use the mouse.

Thom~

Excuse my typos and sometimes awful grammar. My fingers work faster than my brain does.
Larnu.uk

Michael L John One Orange Chip Points: 27055 More actions · Answer 13

So, getting my 8 and 10 year old grand kids to take showers during the Covid crisis has been tough. Today, after a lot of begging, the 8 year old finally goes and gets a shower.

I'm on my weekly Teams call with my boss, and a semi-naked wet little boy comes strolling up behind me. My boss lost it. He was laughing so hard he had to end the meeting.

Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736212 More actions · Answer 14

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

SSC Guru

Points: 736212

August 12, 2020 at 4:54 pm

#3779323

Better than my Zoom. Just a cat jumping on the desk

jonathan.crawford SSCertifiable Points: 6612 More actions · Answer 15

Michael L John wrote:

So, getting my 8 and 10 year old grand kids to take showers during the Covid crisis has been tough. Today, after a lot of begging, the 8 year old finally goes and gets a shower.
I'm on my weekly Teams call with my boss, and a semi-naked wet little boy comes strolling up behind me. My boss lost it. He was laughing so hard he had to end the meeting.

hahaha....sounds familiar. "You need to take a shower"....."um, how about tomorrow" *finger guns*

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