Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> ....about how hard it is to do something as "simple" as changing a cell 
> to have a constant value instead of a formula (a 5-second operation in 
> Excel itself).

"Excel 2007 cannot open the file we have manually updated"

Well, no, I can understand that. Excel opens the file, says "Hey, the 
value of the sum of the columns you added up doesn't match when I 
recalculate it, so something must be corrupt in the file."  Seems to 
make sense to me.

(Plus, ODF says this doesn't work anyway, because you corrupted the 
digital signature. :-)

"If the changes are made on a server without Excel 2007 installed and 
the resulting spreadsheet is distributed to employees throughout the 
organization, then every single employee will have to get through a full 
spreadsheet recalculation (arbitrarily lengthy) next time they open the 
spreadsheet."   Well, yeah, duh.  I'm going to change a spreadsheet full 
of calculations, not do the calculations myself, and then ask the 
spreadsheet to open it, and ... what would you expect?

"What this shows pretty clearly is that either we lack the tools, or 
Microsoft does not think we should be doing that in the first place."

Or, maybe, if you're going to edit a spreadsheet that contains formulas, 
you should understand spreadsheet formulas? Or accept the fact that the 
program that does will fix it for you?  I can't even imagine why this is 
a complaint.

Then he complains that if he corrupts every single formula in the 
spreadsheet, then he can't edit it in a way that lets Excel load it 
without recalculating stuff?

* *
Oh jeez. His second complaint is that floating point numbers aren't exact.

* *
His third complaint is "the format is too hard. Whaaaaaaa!"

His first three complaints about the format all consist of "I can't take 
a spreadsheet, make arbitrary changes to it, and expect it to still 
work."  Well, yeah, the point of spreadsheet software is to sync the 
interrelationships between the pieces.

OK, enough.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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