This behavior is annoying as hell, but I also think it’s for the best. Excel specifically was way too trusting, has a full development environment with the ability to auto-run macros, and has become a convenient vector for delivering malicious code.
I once made an xlsx with a VBA module and put it in my often-late coworkers’ startup folder. It would check log-on time and if it was between 9:01am and 9.59am it would send an email to the rest of the team apologizing for being late that day.
Stunning that I could do that on what was supposedly a locked-down internal system.
I once used VBA to script and automate 90% of my old desk job. I just needed a way to automate keyboard input and some basic conditional controls.
I couldn’t install python or run batch scripts as the machine was heavily locked down, but luckily MS provided all the tools I needed inside excel. System admins hate this one trick, thanks microsoft!
haha yeah same. We had this terrible internal CMS that I would automate the hell out of.
What in the actual fuck.
what an incredible jackass
I mean, if people weren’t desensitized to warnings like this by getting them constantly, I think you’d be right
In IT we have to consider the signal to noise ratio of warning users.
Instead of asking why your word processor should have the ability to run arbitrary code, you just inconvenience everyone else on the chance it might. What even.
Yup, it’s a shit bandaid to mitigate a shit design. The MS specialty.
Scripting is great in Excel, but I’ve never encountered or heard of a use for it in Word.
I used to work at a place where one of their test machines generated a cert in Microsoft Word with test results. They were having their lab technicians manually type in something like eight fields of information to flesh put the cert. I managed to hack together a Word VBA plus Python script to interface with the OpenOffice database I had set up so the techs only had to type in one field, and the script filled in the rest.
It was kind of a monstrosity under the hood, but it worked pretty slickly, and given the available tools I was glad the option existed.
Yep.
A constant stream of creating problems and then creating solutions for those problems, which cause more problems…ad infinitum.
Go back and fix the root cause?
Impossible!
Then our 2nd and 3rd tier ‘solutions’ would have all the ‘solutions’ based on them not work!
Just TODAY I generated a text file via a bash script, and when attempting to open it in Notepad++ Windows insisted on warning me about potential hazards because it couldn’t verify who created the file. A text file! Heavens. I wonder how long I’ll last in that blasted Windows centric environment.
Nothing compares to the foolish audacity of excel to switch numbers to scientific notation by default. This can’t possibly be the most commonly desired outcome. Its the most annoying “feature” they have that has existed forever.
Hey. Look at that column of dates you got. Would be a shame if they got converted to random numbers.
Hey that’s a cool sequence of genes. Would be a shame if we converted a few into date format when you try to save as .csv
Sure but at the same time they shouldn’t be using Excel as a database.
Nobody does that?
In the example you’re talking about the scientists were using it as a database. A Microsoft executive even came out and told them that you shouldn’t use it as a database.
Occasionally there’s even articles in scientific journals explaining why you shouldn’t use Excel as a database and suggesting alternatives. But for some reason people still turn to their favourite not database database software.
This isn’t a live or massive dataset. It’s a table of data from the samples that were sequenced.
CSV is a perfectly adequate format for the work being done. Actually, Excel’s bug-as-a-feature is the only reason you wouldn’t want to use it.
Im sorry, the auto date formating is by far the worst. Just leave my numbers the fuck alone man, numbers are supposed to be precise, judt dont fucking touch em. Rant over lol
I hope the EU sues the shit out of MS some time for this “feature”. Write protection is one of the few things Libreoffice can’t handle well, and from my perspective, that is the entire reason they have it. Also, funny enough, Office 362, their own fucking product, also can’t handle it. So you need a computer where you can install the desktop version, just to untick the fucking “write-protected” box and do your job.
In academic research, you often have to apply for money from funding agencies, using write-protected templates. If you don’t use the exact template or if it looks distorted in some way, you’re out (of consideration for the funding, and long-term out of your job).
Well before it people were getting hacked by VBS macros so yeah it makes sense…
More profitable to sell the disease and the cure!
Is it ribbed for her pleasure?
But it will just close and reopen and act like nothing happened, except your work is gone. Just switching meeting room? Well, who does that!?
