Editing Talk:2180: Spreadsheets

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I really hope Randall shares this formula he made. It sounds incredible. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.34|162.158.126.34]] 21:15, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
: Seems to me to perhaps be a bit of nerdsniping (a la XKCD 356) bait...

My unofficial job title is the Head of the Department for Extreme Spreadsheeting. There are multiple reasons for this, including that we need to share info easily across different offices, I'm very familiar with spreadsheet formulas, and I have no f***ing clue how to get a SQL database functioning properly. [[User:Misterblu28|Misterblu28]] ([[User talk:Misterblu28|talk]]) 21:48, 24 July 2019 (UTC)misterblue28
: It involves chickens, black candles, a full moon, and one of those fancy space-age pens that can write on any surface.

The "devil" is clearly a reference to the FreeBSD daemon mascot. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.38.64|172.68.38.64]] 04:42, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
: The devil is clearly a devil.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.148|141.101.98.148]] 08:48, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

The devil is clearly the strong one for everyone working in my company. A list used by ~50 people, 3 times a day? lets just put an excel sheet on sharepoint.... A complex design tool? Give me 2 days and a lot of hidden sheets in the back of the file and do it in excel - everything is excel. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 06:04, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Anybody remember Oracle’s SQL*Calc spreadsheet application?  Individual cells could not only contain select queries but also insert, update, and delete, all using variable data from the spreadsheet.  So you could select data from tables into a multidimensional array of cells in s spreadsheet, manipulate the data in the cells, then insert in back into the same (or different!) tables.  Powerful but dangerous![[Special:Contributions/172.68.46.167|172.68.46.167]] 06:15, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Remember all the TV Tropes links? We could totally put “Good Angel, Bad Angel” here. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.141.148|172.68.141.148]] 10:41, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I refuse to accept this as complete until somebody can get the original script out of Randall or somebody here manages to make something that does the same job, or better.

Here's a start to the formula; it doesn't use REGEXMATCH() however.  Uses a named range 'DatesList' which has the list of dates. Generates a calendar with Sunday in the first column where the only dates showing are those in the list -- wasn't sure what sort of output to target.  =ARRAYFORMULA(IF(ISERROR(MATCH(ARRAYFORMULA(SEQUENCE((MAX(DatesList)-MIN(DatesList)-WEEKDAY(MIN(DatesList))+1)/7+1,7,MIN(DatesList)-WEEKDAY(MIN(DatesList)),1)),DatesList,0)),"",ARRAYFORMULA(SEQUENCE((MAX(DatesList)-MIN(DatesList)-WEEKDAY(MIN(DatesList))+1)/7+1,7,MIN(DatesList)-WEEKDAY(MIN(DatesList)),1))))

Relevant other comics about Excel (from a developer's perspective): http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2014/07/23/excel-the-poor-mans-ideexcel-lide-du-pauvre/ and /2014/12/19/the-coder-and-the-beast/ [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.136|108.162.229.136]] 19:57, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

My goto functions tend to be LOOKUP() (or HLOOOKUP() and VLOOKUP() for various subtelties like matching unsorted arrays), LEFT(), RIGHT(), MIDDLE(), COUNTA(), COUNTIF() (especially for range A$1:A''current_or_preceding_row_number_for_this_cell'' to establish "this is the ''n''th example of some quality in this column", usually for firstness), FIND(), ISERR(), ISNUMBER(), SUBSTITUTE(), and of course loads and loads of IF()s, ...usually heavily nested. And at least these days Open/LibreOffice accept comma seperation of function params, 'cos forgwtting I'm not in Excel and not using semicolons in such a scratch-built monstrosity leading to an error that ''wasn't'' bad logic or nesting was a bummer, until I realised... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.148|141.101.98.148]] 20:56, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I was hoping the explanation would say what those named functions do, LOL! Never used Google Sheets. But I've used the hell out of Excel. Can't imagine how a single cell could display a calendar, but I've often done a quick on-the-fly calendar where each cell is a day... Usually to check what weekdays certain days are. Like "What weekday was I born?". Often I designate one cell as a starting date, the first row uses the WEEKDAY function to check "Is that this weekday, an earlier weekday or a later weekday?". A later weekday, leave it blank. An earlier weekday, take yesterday and add one. This weekday, show it. Then Week 2, Sunday is Saturday + 1, Monday is Sunday + 1, etc. Copy / Paste to finish the week, Copy / Paste the week to finish the calendar. I change the cell formatting to show only the Day of the date, but each cell stores an entire date. And the 8th column shows the month every time the month changes (usually a VLOOKUP on a reference table I make with Fill Series). I can then just change the master cell to change what date range the calendar shows. I might use Excel the most for mass renaming files though. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:24, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
::excel to rename files? How very Rube Goldberg.  Windows still includes shell batch commands (.bat files) for that kind of functionality.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.246.82|162.158.246.82]] 14:44, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
:::Yes, I use Excel to make the contents of the batch file, a list of REN commands instead of typing them individually, then copy and paste to a Notepad file, save it as "Go.bat", then type Go in a DOS command window. :) I use Excel to construct all the individual filenames, then compile the old names with the new names into "ren [old name] [new name]". If there's more than like 5 files, programming the Excel is faster and less work than naming each file individually. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:43, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
::::"Go.bat"? How uninformative! – I, on the other hand tend to use "do.bat" for all my "preautomate a single task" needs... Much more descriptive, I'm sure everyone will agree. ;)

Something about the display is bugged out.  [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.67|162.158.107.67]] 05:43, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

QUERY() is overrated. FILTER() is more advanced and usable in other formulas.

I find this comic to be an accurate reflection of part of my job.  I am the IT guy for our company.  Which means that I'm also in charge of taking the basic reports that came with our point of sale program and editing the data into reports that are custom designed to answer the question that the manager asks.  And the question is often different every day.  So dropping the 10 page report into a spreadsheet to massage the data into 5 lines of 'boss answer' makes sense.  But sometimes the question is a repeat.  And after the 10th time the manager asked the question, I added a procedure into the database.  So now every time I get a 'boss question', I have to decide if I'm going to make a procedure for it or a spreadsheet.  The comic gets amusingly ridiculous for me on the 3rd panel, because running a query in the spreadsheet has pushed the complexity of my work up to the point where it's just as easy to make the procedure in the database. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.90.76|172.68.90.76]] 19:45, 29 July 2019 (UTC)SiliconWolf

For days after this comic was uploaded I was afraid to visit explain-xkcd as I was certain that the formula mentioned in the title text would be recreated already. Call me nerd-sniped, but I could not resist giving it a try. So here it is: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q5GOo6x49HkyDsDGmr61za4S5GWCuXQkd-tX9zN4Zwo/edit?usp=sharing The calendar generates entirely from cell D4. Only input is start date in A1 and end date in A2. I don't know if Randall seriously developed the formula he described, but mine differs somewhat from his description. It does make heavy use of SEQUENCE, but uses only one ARRAYFORMULA (why would you double-nest it anyway?) and does not use REGEXMATCH as I could not find any use for it. Of course, there's also a hodgepodge of functions SWITCH, IF, some operators and a bunch of functions related to date calculations. It freezes the browser for some 15 seconds just as Randall promised. Output is a calendar displaying all the months from start to end date, containing name of the month, year, weekdays and every individual day. Feel free to copy the formula from D4 into your own Google Sheets spreadsheet and add any dates you like in cells A1 and A2 (they must be in those two cells in your sheet, too) using the function =DATE(yyyy,mm,dd). For me it works easily even for dates decades apart. If you see a random N/A error in one or two cells (though I haven't spotted any), let me know, it's easily correctable. If you see a REF error, you probably inserted dates decades apart, in which case you just need to hold on and Google will add more rows automatically. Be patient with it. [[User:Ipez|Ipez]] ([[User talk:Ipez|talk]]) 15:03, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

if that also works in excel, i'll definitely use that [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 23:48, 13 October 2023 (UTC)