Little random note

[selenay]

I have a feeling that Excel taking ten minutes to calculate all the cells in the spreadsheet that I'm building implies that I've got way too many cells with formulas in.

It's only 3000 rows. With eleven columns. Of VLOOKUPs.

Erm.

I think that I need to figure out another way to do this. 'Cos my super whizzy, 2GB of RAM machine is almost falling over each time the cells calculate, so the rest of the office on their 256MB of RAM may have problems.

Did you know that it's possible to get 100% CPU usage in your task manager that way?

I think that I need a break. I've obviously gone insane. Or possibly I just need an insanity icon.

Comments

[historyterry.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. I'll agree with all of the above :-). Hope you're heading home by now.

Hope your evening's okay.

T.

[selenay]

I was in the car when you typed this :-) Evening was lovely - parents were out so I sat around watching DVDs and Atlantis, eating chicken grills and chips.

And thanks for the reassurance on all counts ;-)

[paranoidangel]

I have a feeling that Excel taking ten minutes to calculate all the cells in the spreadsheet that I'm building implies that I've got way too many cells with formulas in.

I think I've had mine take longer than 10mins before. Not very often, though. That is a LOT of VLOOKUPS. And is it sad that I know exactly what you're talking about? :)

2GB of RAM machine

Oh, wow, how did you get that? I'm still excited about my new (second-hand) machine with 256meg RAM and Windows XP.

[selenay]

That is a LOT of VLOOKUPS

*snort* And that was after taking out two columns of lookups. That is a nasty spreadsheet.

And is it sad that I know exactly what you're talking about? :)

Moderately, yes ;-)

Oh, wow, how did you get that?

I was a new arrival and they had to get me some kind of computer. So they got me a top-of the line one. I won't bore you with my rant on taking a beautiful, speedy, zippy little thing and stripping it of Windows XP, Office 2003 and every other good thing, leaving me with NT, Office 97 and Lotus Notes. Done that rant way too many times :-)

[paranoidangel]

I won't bore you with my rant on taking a beautiful, speedy, zippy little thing and stripping it of Windows XP, Office 2003 and every other good thing, leaving me with NT, Office 97 and Lotus Notes.

OK, that is utterly ridiculous. I've got Office 2000 and 2002, and although 2002 is better, I've seen 2003 and would really like that one. Very glad I don't have to use 97 or Notes though :)

Is there anything to stop you downloading OpenOffice at home and installing it at work? I've not used it much, so I don't know how the spreadsheet compares to Excel, but I'm sure it can't be worse than 97 or Notes.

[selenay]

*sigh* Corporate policy prevents it, sadly. They don't let us have admin level access to our computers.

Apparently they are upgrading the systems this year to XP and Office 2003 (without Lotus Notes! Yay!) so I can't see any reason for stripping all of that from my computer, but until then I'm stuck with what I've got.

I've heard great things about OpenOffice and I'm thinking about dl-ing and installing it at home to see how it works. The only downside that I can see is that I'm not sure of its support for macros, which we use an absolute ton of in our applications at work.

But the company IT systems are beyond insanity. Lotus Notes is bananas and as for Office 97...

[paranoidangel]

They don't let us have admin level access to our computers.

That's annoying. That's probably one advantage of being in a small company. Although I also have the company admin password... :)

Apparently they are upgrading the systems this year to XP and Office 2003 (without Lotus Notes! Yay!)

That's something, at least.

I've heard great things about OpenOffice and I'm thinking about dl-ing and installing it at home to see how it works. The only downside that I can see is that I'm not sure of its support for macros, which we use an absolute ton of in our applications at work.

That's a good point, I hadn't thought of that. I don't really use Office that much outside of work, so I've not used OpenOffice that much. I do know that its PowerPoint equivalent has some really cool effects to change from one slide to another.

[gmul.livejournal.com]

They don't let us have admin level access to our computers.

That's annoying.

And essential in an organisation of any size, unless it's willing to adequately fund its IT department to support almost as many different configurations of PC as there are users. Which they never are. Top-mid-level management are usually the worst, somehow having the time to play with their machines, break them and then demand that someone stops whatever they're doing, whatever and however important it is and fix it. But I digress (in a bitter and twisted fashion even).

Moving to XP and Office 2003 will be requiring a lot of work, mostly behind the scenes that the users won't see. Lots of details to deal with, including migrating everything over from Notes, configuring machine images, migrating workstations, upgrades, making sure drivers are available for all the odd bits of hardware that are floating around and so on. Upgrading a small office from NT4 or 2000 servers to 2003 takes me at least 4 days, maybe 5 if you have to apply too many software updates to the workstations, or too many won't migrate automatically. And that's just changing the server, upgrading the workstations as well would take at least another couple of days, if you're going to make sure all the things like IE favourites and other such little things are retained.

The thing about OpenOffice in Sel's sort of context is that everyone would need to be using it. There'd be little advantage in having some people using it and others not by the time you allow for file interoperability (or lack of) between MSOffice and OpenOffice components, licencing costs, training (yes it's very similar but not exactly the same), macro support, getting people trained up on the helpdesk and so on.

Do excuse me, I may have done some of that rant before. I've not forgotten I was going to find you a Group Policy setting for something, I've just not had a spare moment when I've remembered to do so, sorry!

[paranoidangel]

And essential in an organisation of any size, unless it's willing to adequately fund its IT department to support almost as many different configurations of PC as there are users.

I wasn't suggesting that they necessarily should give everyone admin access to their computers - I know most companies don't. I'm very glad ours do, though, because nothing would ever get done. I am not exaggerating.

The thing about OpenOffice in Sel's sort of context is that everyone would need to be using it.

I actually meant that maybe it would be useful for copying data, doing some calculations then putting it back into excel and saving it. I didn't mean that she should be saving things that way.

I've not forgotten I was going to find you a Group Policy setting for something,

It was to do with the windows updates being set for installing at 4 o'clock and then restarting your computer when you least expect it. But dad had a search and found a program to install that sorted it, so now I can install my updates whenever I like, or most usually, forget and do it when it reminds me when I shut down.