Damn Excel! How the 'most important software application of all time' is ruining the world

In 2017, Adobe's CFO banned his employees from using Excel (all of them switched to Adaptive Insights EPM, other alternatives include Anaplan and Workiva). The same bans were issued by the management of China Bistro, ABM Industries, Wintrust Financial and many other companies. Abandoning Excel reduces the risk of errors in calculations and simplifies document flow.

The EuSpRIG (European Spreadsheet Risk Group) study showed that more than 90% of spreadsheets contain errors, and half of corporate spreadsheets have “material defects”.

And then there are the traditional auto-formatting glitches that cause even biologists to have to rename human genes such as MARCHF1 (formerly MARCH1) and SEPTIN1 (formerly SEPT1) so that Excel doesn't mistake them for dates. A study of 3,597 published scientific articles found that about 20% of the accompanying materials (spreadsheets) to the articles had errors in gene names:

Leading zeros are removed from identifiers and other values in cells by default - this is also a standard Excel behavior that often leads to problems. Importing any data from CSV into Excel runs the risk of corrupting it. And that data can be vital, necessary to save those same patients in hospitals.

That's why Excel is sometimes called “the most dangerous program on the planet.” Too much depends on it. And too many errors.

https://habr.com/ru/companies/ruvds/articles/835390/

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