Today I discovered that we have a CSV export button for an order transaction system, on a page which is completely disconnected from the rest of the website.

It is only being called by an internal server, used by our Data department.

They run selenium to click the button.

Then they import the CSV into a database.

That database is accessed by an admin panel.

That admin panel has an excel export button.

Which is clicked by our CFO. But he got bored of clicking, so he uses IFTTT to schedule a download of the XLS and import it in Google Sheets.

That sheet uses a Salesforce data connector.

Marketing then sends email campaigns based on that Salesforce data...

😒

[Thursday afternoon on a call...]

Client: Before we get started, can you create a sitescape outlining all of the pages and sections of the new website?

Me: Sure! I'll go through the website and shoot you a full layout in xls format as soon as possible, that way you can easily make notes on what you want added, modified or removed.

[Two hours later...]

Client: Hey, did you build that sitescape yet?

Me: Actually, I've been on back-to-back calls with other clients.

Client: So when are you going to get it done?

Me: Well, I have to go through the current website in it's entirety, which I'm guessing is about 1,000 pages. I have to determine which pages work fine on their own, which need to be combined for better presentation and which should be removed due to redundancy. That's something that is tedious and takes some time to complete. That, in combination with having an existing work queue that I need to fit you within and being at the end of the work week, we're looking at Tuesday morning to have it ready.

Client: "Existing work queue"? This is ridiculous. We're paying you good money to make our project your only priority. If we wanted to wait days for work, we would have saved money and paid for a cheaper service. You're already gouging us as it is! If we don't get the sitescape by end of day Friday, we're going with another company.

Me: I would tell you that I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm not. I'm not going to feed you a line to make you happy. I'm also not going to work on my days off just to rush something out to you. You hired us because you wanted things done right, not quickly. Your current website is the result of not focusing on quality, but by how fast you can deliver it. We don't work that way. We only build quality products.

By rushing your project, not only do we alienate our current clients, affecting our reputation, but we build product of less than the highest quality. That will upset you because it isn't perfect, and it reflects poorly on us to use it in our portfolio.

If you want to hire someone to pump out this project to your unrealistic deadlines, be our guest. But you paid a 50% non-refundable deposit, so not only will you lose money, but your end product will suffer.

I'm going to let you sleep on this. If you decide tomorrow that another direction is the way to go, we wish you luck. But please understand that if we conclude our business, we will no longer make ourselves available for your needs.

Please find the attached contracts you have signed, acknowledging the non-refundable deposit, as well as the project timeline and scope, of which a "sitescape" was never originally mentioned or blocked out for time.

I hope that tomorrow we can move forward in a more professional manner.

[Next morning...]

Client: My apologies for yesterday. We're just very anxious to get this started.

-----

Don't let clients push you around. Make them sign a contract and enforce it whenever necessary.

20 yrs programming experience and still fucks with xls.

Soo.. Google is using ReCaptcha to improve their AI... They are verifying the answers by having multiple users solve the same image...

Couldn't we break their AI by just having enough users answer the same Captcha in the same wrong way?

hugging Microsoft with their clucking buggy software!

>> generate an xls with Apache POI
>> colour some particular cells in green, others - in red.
>> export as xls

>> open with LibreOffice Calc -- looks pretty
>> upload to Slack, open slack's generated xls preview -- looks pretty
>> open with GDocs -- looks pretty
>> open with sheet.zoho.com -- looks pretty
>> open with onlinedocumentviewer.com -- looks pretty
>> open with aspose.app -- looks pretty

>> open the xls with MS Office Excel -- more than half of the cells are unformatted, uncoloured

🔥🗑🔥

I assumed Apache's POI library referred to the XLS spreadsheet as "HSSFSheet" because of some internal acronym I could never be bothered to look up.

I had no idea it actually stands for "Horrible spreadsheet format."

Email from a department mgr regarding a sharepoint site we inherited (lots of custom javascript, XLS, etc, stuff we didn't write)

Dan: "The department filter isn't showing up when I select the 'Logistics and Support' department. Was this caused by the changes you guys made? Its causing a major disruption in our processes and need it fixed ASAP."
Me: "Those changes went out almost two months ago and all the filters were working fine, at least that is what you told me when you tested it."
Dan: "I thought so, but its not working. It has probably been broken ever since you made those changes so I filed a corrective action ticket against your department for not following the documented deployment and testing processes"
Me: "Really? We've been over this. Its your department that is responsible for that sharepoint site. Previous developers hacked javacript together to make it all work, but I'm sure its something simple."
Dan: "Great. I'll start putting together a root-cause analysis to determine which of your processes we need to address."

Start looking at the javascript and found the issue..

if (dept === "Logistics & Support") {
$('deptFilter').show();
}
else {
$('deptFilter').hide();
}

Me: 'Found the issue. Did you rename the logistics department?'
Dan: 'No'
Me: 'To show or hide the filter, the code was looking for "Logistics & Support", someone changed the title to "Logistics and Support"'
Dan: "Well...I guess I did that yesterday...but I didn't change the name, just that stupid character. That shouldn't make any difference."
Me: "I can fix that right now. Are you going to need more information for your root cause analysis?"
Dan: "No, I think we're good. Thanks."

Guessing 'estimations' ! That is the worst by far ! Second ... xls or pdf exportations .

Me: so we've added bunch of features to our app so that everything updates live automatically and you can edit it online and sort and filter and do bunch of other stuff.

Boss: great, how do I export it to xls?

Hey. Can you add excel97 vba capabilities to new office 365 ? I have a 20years old xls file with very complicated macros that i need to run.
And btw, how come a software looses capabilities over time.

I am currently creating a module where I have to put data in xls sheet from a given data, which contains date column,.
I have generated the sheet and the respective date column also has the format of Date which is default of Microsoft Excel.
But the big question noew arises that I am not able to sort the data according to the date column, the sorting is not working correctly.

If anyone has ever worked on this please tell!!