this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Make it too expensive and people will switch to Google docs.

[–] john89@lemmy.ca 2 points 19 hours ago

The fact it costs anything at all, let alone a subscription, should be enough for the working class to seek other options.

This generation has sold itself out to the lowest bidder.

[–] Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Google workspace just pulled the same crap with Gemini

[–] raker@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Last week at us.

First question I asked the evil twin was: "How can I deactivate Gemini and never hear from it again?" Support article poped up, where must opt out from some Labs setting or some bs, but only a workspace admin can do it.

Ended up with blocking that flare button with uBo. Problem solved.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

The point is it's free.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Excel is the deal breaker on that. My last company was all Google products and auth, but I still had to buy Excel for the accounting and HR teams.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Um excel certainly has its places, but accounting? Don't they have actual dedicated software for accounting? HR? Like payroll? Again don't they have actual software for that?

And I was thinking personal use, whose costs were posted. $100 a year, fuck that.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's hard to believe, but I work at a Fortune 100 company that's still heavily reliant on Excel.

Sure, we have specific software as System of Record (Oracle suite, mainly). But for all the day to day estimating and calculating and reporting and other noodling, people routinely export to Excel and play with numbers from there.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The point is you can use google docs or Libreoffice for day to day mundane things.

It's only the huge power features that you need Excel for, maybe in engineering. For accounting when you get to that power feature point I'm surprised there isn't dedicated software.

[–] toddestan@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Excel is a spreadsheet, and spreadsheets like Excel are first and foremost aimed at accounting sort of tasks. Whether they actually need Excel versus something like Google Docs or Libreoffice is another thing. The big thing with Excel is that it gets used (and abused) to do things that it's not really intended for doing such as those spreadsheets that are full of macros trying to be an application, or those spreadsheets that are trying to be a database, and so forth.

From an engineering perspective, I find Excel to be annoying because it's clearly first and foremost an accounting tool, and some of its behaviors like the way it rounds numbers and tries to turn everything into a date is downright obnoxious. I still use it from time to time for quick and dirty things like whipping up a couple of plots quickly (and this doesn't really need Excel... but at work all the computers have Excel), but otherwise for anything more complicated I'd probably switch to something else.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Like it's a fun number cruncher, but for serious accounting that's tied into point of sale, accounts receivable, accounts payable, etc you really should be running something dedicated. That's why there are all these software companies making bank when from the outside you can't quite figure out what they do.

Protip on excel, when you start a new sheet ctrl+a, ctrl+1, change to number.

[–] send_me_your_ink@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

See you think that - but excel finds a way. We have what are lovingly called the "spreadsheets of doom" which accounting uses to manage all forecasts, and the bits that involve money flows. Did you know you can hook excel into Salesforce and pull all the sales records? A person who thinks her monitor is her computer (she has a Dell laptop) somehow found a way...

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I remember my dad had a problem and asked if he had to take the monitor or the tower to the shop.