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A comment on Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-out use of Excel. Parent comment

Re:Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-... by mantap on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @10:01AM (#24697711)
One wonders why Excel doesn't store data as strings (or equivalent lossless format) and process it as numbers like SQLite does for instance.
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Re:Missing Covid-19 test data was caused by the ill-thought-... by zentiggr on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @10:16AM (#24697844)
Because Excel is a spreadsheet, for calculating with numbers.

Then there's additional code for dealing with all the inconvenient ways people format things, or want to add text labels, or do things closer to numerical/financial analysis, or all the other extras wrapped around the core "put numbers in boxes and do math".

That misunderstanding is at the core of Excel misuse.

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