User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work
- Reference: 1700810775
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/11/24/on_call/
- Source link:
This week, meet a reader who asked to be Regomized as "Jeremy" and shared a story of his late 1990s role in "a fairly low-level job for a 'national infrastructure' organization."
"My team's role was to support a number of account managers," Jeremy explained, adding that those folks were "vastly experienced and ridiculously knowledgeable having spent their entire careers in the industry."
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The account managers had also learned how to get along in an office. Jeremy rated them "a decent bunch and a pleasure to work with."
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But most were far closer to the end of their careers than the start, meaning the PCs and productivity software that landed on their desks required a lot of late-career learning. Jeremy's job was to ensure they remained efficient in creating invoices, presentations, and reports.
"Much of my work involved using Excel (at this time the newfangled Excel 97) linking and summarizing bits of data via VLOOKUPs, SUMIFs and the like," he told On Call, adding: "Over time I'd developed a reputation for being 'mildly competent'."
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That competence led one of the account managers to ask for a bit of help with Excel.
Jeremy visited the relevant PC and found what appeared to be Excel. The user explained they were trying to enter data and showed that wasn't working by clicking on a cell and waiting in vain as it failed to display the border that indicates Excel is ready for input.
Jeremy tried the same thing. He, too, had no luck. He clicked a menu bar. It was also unresponsive.
[5]Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support
[6]CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it
[7]Suits ignored IT's warnings, so the tech team went for the neck
[8]Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it
The first thing any techie tries when confronted with an inexplicable bug is turning it off and turning it on again.
Jeremy decided to try that.
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This proved hard as the necessary bits of Excel's toolbar were missing – yet all of Microsoft Word's interface was available.
"At this point the penny dropped," Jeremy admitted, as it was then he recalled that one of his colleagues had written a Word document with instructions on how to use Excel. To help the account managers get the message, that document included lots of illustrative screenshots.
Jeremy realized his user had clicked on a screenshot, which had grown to a size at which it was easily mistaken for Excel itself. This also explained why it would not accept input.
"I explained the problem was and was greeted by lots of laughter and we agreed an appropriate solution was to add a clickable link within the Word document to open the actual Excel file.
"Of course, this would be a brilliant story if the person involved were some uppity know-it-all whose seniority level was substantially above their competency level, but it just wasn't the case," Jeremy told On Call. Instead, "the individual involved was a pleasure to work with and when the entire team was disbanded, and I was reassigned under an Excess Cost Elimination Programme (or maybe it was a Cost Base Reduction Initiative – the higher-ups were good at coming up with euphemisms for making redundancies) it sadly became a far worse place to work."
Which just goes to show that uppity know-it-alls whose seniority level is substantially above their competency level always show up to ruin things eventually.
Have you fixed an app that wasn't an app? Or worked with users who were so nice you happily helped even their silliest requests? [10]Click here to send On Call an email and we may share your story on a future Friday. ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/17/on_call/
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Yeah, it sounds Excel-lent
Word!
Always be polite to PAs ...
Some time ago (!), I had a phone call after lunch one Friday from the executive director's PA, that the mouse on her newly-installed Unisys BTOS machine kept moving the cursor the wrong way.
Not really my job at the time, but she was a genuinely nice person, and me being always ready to earn brownie points, I toddled down to her workstation to help.
On arrival, found the mouse with the cable pointing *towards* me: so, turned the offending rodent around, everything worked fine. Much ensuing merriment, on the lines of "did you have a good lunch?"
Hehe.
I did something similar yesterday preparing documentation. Tabbing between screenshots and documents, I had a moment where I thought my document editor had hung, only to realise a couple of seconds later I was on the snap-shot screen instead.
That and sharepoint when it presents you with a document you can't edit, and you don't realise until after a few taps...
Just recently my boss (who is very technical) was trying to follow some instructions that I had written (pretty well if I do say so myself), but got stuck at a certain point, because I hadn't included something that I'd thought was too obvious to be required. Then I remembered, the procedure was documented, because it was designed for end users, the instructions were on the screen my boss was looking at.
My boss had been so caught up in the details they'd not bothered to read those instructions, thinking that because they were for end users, how could they possibly help them, a technically competent person? ;)
(I'm being intentionally vague on the details here)
I've done that... the document was improved by making sure the text about the screenshot was on the same page as it.
Done that bit, skip
Done that bit, skip
Doing that bit... where are the instructions? Can't be on the previous page because I've done that bit!
common
Saw a similar thing long time ago, someone trying to change language settings in office (multinational staff in company). IT writes guide and emails it to staff. Staff member has problem with it and another techie goes to help. Brings up the guide email and in the email itself (not even full screen) tries multiple times to click on the screenshot menu (despite the actual menu showing above the screenshot!). Fails and gives up going to get help. Other non IT staff member points out issue and correct menu & user fixes it themselves and tell techie it's all fine now.
Massive fail by techie who has left that profession now and moved onto project management. Probably for the best as same techie didn't know what a heatsink was, slight lack of technical aptitude.
Re: common
Project manager might be right for him. I know project managers which are very good at being a project manager, but bad at being techie.
Click, click, click, nothing happens
Reminds me of a common trick we used to play in the office from that era, probably still works today if people weren't so keen to lock their screens.
Close all windows and take a screen grab of a user's desktop. Set that screen grab as the desktop backdrop and then delete all or some of the actual desktop icons. All the icons appear as normal, but obviously don't do anything. A variation was to modify the desktop screen grab to be one pixel shifted, and leave all the icons in place so they appear fuzzy to the eye.
Re: Click, click, click, nothing happens
Screenshot
Rotate 180 degrees
Set as background
Delete icons
Rotate desktop 180 degrees
That one was truly mean if people didn't know the quick keyboard shortcut (or it had been disabled) to return the desktop to normal.
still couldn't make 'Excel' work
The correct solution in this scenario is to take another screenshot of the spreadsheet embedded in the Word document, open Paint and paste the screenshot there. The spreadsheet can then be edited by drawing numbers into the cells with the pencil tool. If you need to add columns up, open Calculator and type in each number,in the column, pressing the '+' key between them - quick AND easy!
Re: still couldn't make 'Excel' work
And to send it via email you print it, and then use the scan2email function of said MFC-printer.
I wish I worked in Jeremy's office.