The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook

Re:The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook by techsupporter on Saturday February 13, 2021 @05:17PM (#26127499)

> Need to change something, put in a a request to IT who might get around to it in a week if you are lucky.

If the change happens at all. The IT department might say "we don't have the time to do that," or "other users depend on the app being like this so we can't change it to be like that," or even "why do you need that, your justification isn't good enough."

Excel is the non-programmer or non-admin equivalent of "I'll just bang that out in [php | python | perl | powershell]." We've all done it, we will all continue to do it, and yes it will look like an absolute mess...that probably winds up powering a Fortune 50 company.

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Re:The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook by ethbr0 on Saturday February 13, 2021 @06:52PM (#26128234)

Moreover, in most non-software companies, IT has covered their asses by prohibiting users from accessing programming tools.

I get that most of us live in a land of "Of course I have an IDE and compilers / REPL" at work.

You know what IDE and compiler IT can't take away? And the last option that's always available at any company?

Excel.

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Re:The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook by formercoder on Saturday February 13, 2021 @10:24PM (#26129370)

Ah but most secretly have Powershell which is super powerful.

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Re:The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook by ethbr0 on Sunday February 14, 2021 @09:13AM (#26132535)

I've contracted in places where cmd is blocked, but Powershell is not. The mind boggles.

(For those cursed to work in Windows enterprise land, most of what is being talked about here is that Powershell is essentially .Net, e.g. '$DateTime = New-Object System.DateTime -ArgumentList 2015, 10, 10')

https://mcpmag.com/articles/2015/11/04/net-members-in-powers...

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Re:The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook by benhurmarcel on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:39AM (#26131166)

My IT department contacted me because their "security" software alerted them that I ran a Powershell command.

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Re:The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook by pjmlp on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:03AM (#26131000)

And .NET compilers actually, living on C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

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Re:The worst of the two worlds: Excel meets Outlook by pjmlp on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:02AM (#26130994)

I have the experience of having worked in UNIX shops where $HOME was mounted noexec, everyone got development rights over access groups and we only got to use official IT tools.

Many are spoiled by having their own devenv nowadays.

Ironically cloud computing is going back to those days, where the cloud IDE and shell only allows for IT validated tools.

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