Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in spreadsheet software?

Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by brudgers on Monday January 15, 2024 @03:13PM (#39005484)

Turning it into a polished app requires a significant time investment still.

Excel is the standard for a "polished" spreadsheet. It has been in development for about 40 years (since it was released in 1985) and has had the resources the most valuable company in the world can put into a flagship cash cow application.

It's-not-Excel is the primary pain point for all spreadsheet applications.

Documentation, training, third-party how-to's, etc. are one of the important ways that It's-not-Excel spreadsheets cause pain.

OK, sure the price of Excel is also a pain point and proprietary licenses are also one. But there might be very reasonable reasons for not focusing on users who prioritize those. Or not.

And Google Sheets and the Apple office suite already cost zero dollars, so there's that too.

Good luck.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by quacked on Monday January 15, 2024 @08:37PM (#39008343)

You nailed it. The only thing Excel doesn't have is the well-designed UI and collaborative functionality of Google Sheets. Named tables, VBA, Power Query? I'm never leaving.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by mcbishop on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @01:23AM (#39010081)

It has the collaborative functionality in Excel Online and in OneDrive-hosted Office-365-subscription desktop Excel.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by fifilura on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @12:26PM (#39015967)

Yes, but it is bolted on an existing desktop application.

I feel it always lags. I also tried to use their API once to e.g. upload data to a sheet but it was really messy.

In google sheets all this worked just fine.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by x0x0 on Monday January 15, 2024 @09:34PM (#39008737)

Also the price of Excel rounds to zero when added to a professional salary for essentially any profession.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by bdhcuidbebe on Monday January 15, 2024 @09:42PM (#39008800)

libreoffice calc is foss, reads excel files and has been around for a long time. i used it professionally since 2011 (used open office before that).

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by blitzar on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @04:18AM (#39011201)

If I add up all the costs required that "effectively round to zero" the remainder from a normal salary rounds to zero.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by x0x0 on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @04:42AM (#39011383)

Nonsense, or surely you'll be able to list these costs that add up to, let's say, over 50% of a salary or $30k plus.

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Re:Ask HN: What are your most common tasks and painpoints in... by wjnc on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @12:50PM (#39016284)

(The Netherlands) Pension contributions + employer taxes + office space. First two add up to about 70% on top of gross wages paid. Office space I’d estimate at € 2k per office worker. But indeed, laptops and MS software is cheap in comparison. Bloomberg Terminal comes to mind as a not so cheap software package.

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