Friday, September 25, 2009

Bill Gates, Why Do You Hate Me So?

Dear Mr. Gates,
I desperately need you to explain something to me. You are a great humanitarian. You have given away countless amounts of money. You have your own charitable foundation. And yet, you allow the continued torture of your Microsoft Office customers by your programmers. Why is this? Where is your humanitarian spirit when it comes to us? We have “upgraded” to Office 2007 ( I know, just in time for 2010 to come out, talk to our “fabulous” tech person.) and I can’t say I’m lovin it. In fact, I can’t say ANYONE in our office loves it. The “Ribbons”, even though they sound pretty, are in truth heinous. I’m sorry, but I must be honest with you on this one. In MS 2003 I cursed your name for not allowing more than 65,500+/- records in Excel. In my job I often deal with records upwards of 75K, into the 100K. I HATED having to cut my file into two. I was always afraid I was going to miss someone. When 2007 came around I rejoiced that Excel could now handle 1 MILLION RECORDS!!!!!! SWEET HEAVEN ON HIGH!!!!! And I resolved to remove you from my shit list.
Today however, you have regained your number 1 spot back on my shit list. Today, I needed to export 756K records into Excel from Access. (please forgive me; anyone of you, who are lost at this point) It would be no problem right? ONE MILLION RECORDS, I had several hundred thousand records to play with! No sweat! Alas, Bill, may I call you Bill? Bill, I got an error message. The message told me that “Clipboard” could only handle 65K records and that I should try cutting my list into two. Whaaa? But, but, BUT!!!! This cannot be the case! You promised me ONE MILLION record capacity!!! What is the point of that if I can’t use it??? I tried exporting (I miss my office links -> analysis in excel, must EVERYTHING be exported nowadays?) it as a Text file. Same error. Bill, I don’t like getting errors. It raises my blood pressure and puts me into panic mode. Surely, Bill, you can understand my SHOCK to find that CSV is NO LONGER offered as an Export option. Did CSV offend you somehow Bill? Did CSV fall into the wrong crowd and you felt the need to punish it? Were you tired of it getting confused with CVS? Text just doesn’t do it for me. CSV used to be my work-around to your little 65K record limit. Of course I still couldn’t open it in Excel, but it made me feel like I was somehow beating the system. Bill, you have taken that wee bit of triumph away from me. It seems to me that you have woefully underestimated the usage of your product. It is as though you’ve said, “Eh, I’ll TELL them they can list ONE MILLION records at a time, but goodness me, they’ll never actually USE it!! Hahahahahahaha. HA.”
So I curse you and your tantalizing carrot waving of ONE MILLION (Dr. Evil voice EVERY SINGLE TIME) record capacity in Excel.
As Rep Joe Wilson says: “YOU LIE!”

3 comments:

Mrs. D said...

OMG I can't imagine how frustrating that must be! I get annoyed enough with the whole docx drama (How can one version of Word NOT BE COMPATIBLE with all your earlier versions of Word? What kind of sick game is this?!?!) but wow - when you're dealing with numbers there's so much opportunity to misplace one. I feel your pain!

Sonia Sunny Thomas said...

It was so frustrating when i had to start using Office 2007 and it sucks big time. Slows down my system..

I have no words to console you. I guess you have to live with it like how we do with the countless other issues with Microsoft!!

Jennifer Lynn said...

Wow!! I so have these problems!! Text sometimes fixes it....or the Data Tab, Get External Data, From Access, and as a last resort I run it through the stats program SAS. I usually have to split mine, still though. Stupid MS.