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Thread ID: 66582 2006-02-28 03:54:00 MS Excel Link problem dcsp (9883) Press F1
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434408 2006-02-28 19:33:00 Heres some info here on Excels new specs...

blogs.msdn.com

Increasing # columns from 256 to 16,384, #rows from 65,536 to 1,048,576 and #cells from 16,777,216 to 17,179,869,184.

What Im happy about is the # conditional formats will go from 3 (pathetic) to limitation by available memory (presumably 100's if not 1,000's). Previously you had to write code to manage >3 c/f.

Its also good to see sorting increased from 3 to 64 although I could always use a dummy column to concatenate the values I wanted but this would be easier.

Excel is not exactly fast in my opinion as it is. No doubt the new version could be a potential resource hog.
Parry (5696)
434409 2006-02-28 21:14:00 You know Excel is a spreadsheet, not a database.

I've seen many businesses, including government agencies and hospitals, running critical processes with Excel spreadsheets. While Excel is easy, it's not robust.

Ask yourself this: "if I lost my spreadsheets, how much will it cost my business, in lost time and money?" If it's significant, maybe it's time to hire a programmer / consultant.
kingdragonfly (309)
434410 2006-02-28 21:23:00 You know Excel is a spreadsheet, not a database .

I've seen many businesses, including government agencies and hospitals, running critical processes with Excel spreadsheets . While Excel is easy, it's not robust .

Ask yourself this: "if I lost my spreadsheets, how much will it cost my business, in lost time and money?" If it's significant, maybe it's time to hire a programmer / consultant .

Indeed true, but whos saying its a database?
Parry (5696)
434411 2006-02-28 21:28:00 It's an easy trap to fall into. Someone creates a handy spreadsheet. It gets placed on a shared folder. Lots of people starting using it. Before long, it's business critical.

I'm not saying Excel doesn't have it's place, but once you start getting thousand of rows, or hundreds of columns, maybe it's changed from a spreadsheet to a database.
kingdragonfly (309)
434412 2006-02-28 21:29:00 You know Excel is a spreadsheet, not a database.

I've seen many businesses, including government agencies and hospitals, running critical processes with Excel spreadsheets. While Excel is easy, it's not robust.

Ask yourself this: "if I lost my spreadsheets, how much will it cost my business, in lost time and money?" If it's significant, maybe it's time to hire a programmer / consultant.I don't use Excel to storethe data - it is used for manipulating the data for reports, calculations, data checking etc. which databases just don't allow for easily. Most my data is already stored in SQL, and a lot of the data that is not stored in SQL is pumped into Excel to manipulate before it is loaded into one of the SQL databases.

Plus when it's all my data, it is far quicker and easier for me to do all the work in Excel than having to try and explain it to one of our database specialists to do in SQL for me.

Mike.
Mike (15)
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