Yes! I've been watching her videos all month, I'm working right now (okay, later today) on the dependent dropdown method she teaches to select data from a FILTER array.
I remember doing math on my watch. I pictured that scene from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress." (One of my classmates in high school gave me his copy of that book. "It's disappointing!" Took me a minute. Then I was sad that he was right.
When I started out, spreadsheets were just lined pieces of paper that we filled in with pen, and a simple "what-if" was two hours with the door to my office closed and hold my calls. We eventually got an early IBM PC with Multiplan, Microsoft's first attempt at a spreadsheet. It was misery-inducing. If you wanted to type a label, you had to first type A for Alpha, or else the computer would assume you were typing in a series of commands. When Lotus came out one of the smartest things they did was making labels the default, and hiding the commands behind the / key--made things much easier. But by the early 1990s, my favorite spreadsheet was Quattro Pro. Unfortunately since Excel was what most of my clients used, I was dragged kicking and screaming back into a Microsoft product. I've fiddled around with some others since then but came to accept Excel eventually.
I often use Excel to check data in Access, as there are often errors, and they show up easier in Excel. I can then correct the errors in Access.
I first used it on an Apple ][ in 1980, but I still haven't really got the hang of spreadsheets in the intervening 45 years. My other half is a whiz with them, though.
I bet these guys do:
Meet Ireland's 'LeBron James' of Microsoft Excel Diarmuid Early
Ireland's 'LeBron James' of Microsoft Excel has won the 2025 world championship in Las Vegas.www.bbc.co.uk
More broadly though, you don't need to know everything about Excel to use it. Most uses don't need the more obscure functions and work arounds.
I think one of the things about it that people here are critical about, is that it can be self taught. You can start making calculations with only the most basic of knowledge, and as your needs expand, you can find out each function as you go, and its all very intuitive. Of course, this can lead to bad habits, which can lead to the problems above. But also relying to much on pivot tables, which can cause so many problems.
Compare this with creating a database - I wouldn't know where to start, and I once went on a one day Access course. I just don't have the time to sit down and learn from scratch how to build one, and I'm currently looking at buying one for our site as our old Access database is struggling. The alternative is finding someone to make one from scratch, but I'm not sure our large company would go with that.
It's called the 80/20 rule. 80% of people use 20% of the features.
I supported and used Lotus Notes, 1-2-3, Word Pro, and Sametime. Domino was the big new thing.
It's on my company's list of disallowed tools.
My spouse's law firm tolerated this for years, but in this case it was an unofficial Excel spreadsheet hacked together by a 2L intern. Sadly, that was pretty advanced for the time. Lawyers are notoriously impervious to technology.
So, what do you use instead?
I've seen too many tables in Word that should have been tables in LaTex.
For example, what specifically?
I did a whole day working on dependent dropdowns a while ago. Most methods (like this one) are ok if you only have a few categories and 2 levels, I was working on a 3-level category list with nearly 200 combination options (the method works for multiple levels). Got there in the end, all working off one source table as well. The function isn't pretty, but doesn't require maintenance to pick up changes - just update the underlying table and it all cascades through. Damned if I can find the source for it though, forgot to bookmark.
