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Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by magicalhippo on Monday April 11, 2022 @03:39PM (#30993703)
> Formulae are supported, but the cell (not column) must be set as the Formulae datatype

As long as it's not tedious to set a few thousand that sounds great.

> What are the other most common formulae that you use?

I mostly use SUM, COUNT and IF (if-then), along with functions to check if a string value is a valid number. Also string formatting of numbers and dates (for concatenating with text).

I've also used lookups, ie find the row matching this and extract the value from the given column in that row. Though I'm not super happy with the way Excel does that, surely some room for improvement.

> Perhaps instead of filtering, you'd like to see outliers or the range of values?

In addition. Sometimes I just want to view all the values matching X, other times I want to quickly see any outliers. Definitely ranges, especially for numbers (just larger than 0 for example, or between 5 and 10).

Sounds like a very interesting project, if you got a link I'd be interested in tracking progress. If not, I'd be happy if you did a Show HN when you're ready :)

Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by dotancohen on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @02:37AM (#30999379)

  > As long as it's not tedious to set a few thousand that sounds great.
How are you setting them? Grab and drag? I can support that.

  > SUM, COUNT and IF (if-then)
Perfect, thank you.

Right now I've started a Git repo with a roadmap but I've not uploaded any code yet as I'm still deciding on the architecture:

https://github.com/dotancohen/structuresheet

Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by magicalhippo on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @06:22AM (#31000721)
> How are you setting them?

I'm old school, so ctrl+c, shift+end (maybe tweak selection area with cursors if Excel is being dumb) and ctrl+v.

Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by dotancohen on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @06:56AM (#31000928)
Terrific, thanks.
Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by magicalhippo on Tuesday April 12, 2022 @09:58AM (#31002830)
While I'm at it... One thing I find annoying in Excel is that it's rather tedious to reference an absolute cell ($B$2) vs a relative cell (C3), especially when I need to reference a handful of each.

The way I work, it would have been better to mark a cell itself as being a "constant" or "input parameter", so that when I reference the cell it is treated as an absolute reference when pasting.

That is, if I reference cell B2 in a formula and paste that formula in a different cell, it is B2 itself that determines if it's a relative or absolute reference, not the way I typed it in the formula.

It's not a huge deal, but it would be one of those nice things that makes life more enjoyable.

Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by dotancohen on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @01:49AM (#31011582)
Would it not be tedious to mark each cell as constant or input parameter? Perhaps it would be preferable to just ask the fine user when copying a cell with a formula?
Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by magicalhippo on Wednesday April 13, 2022 @09:27AM (#31014395)
I almost always have <5 such cells in a sheet, typically just 2-3, so I don't think it would be that tedious given you only have to set that once.

In comparison, I often have formulas with over 20 cell references and/or multiple formulas referencing the "constants", so getting asked for each would indeed be tedious.