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- cross-posted to:
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I recently had a hard time explaining to a coworker that the “Increase number of decimals” button in Excel doesn’t work if you already exported to a CSV with only a decimal of precision. It worked on their end because they had the excel file, but I had the CSV. I managed to come up with a clever and innovative solution to the problem though; I gave up and worked on something else.
I managed to come up with a clever and innovative solution to the problem though; I gave up and worked on something else.
There ya go.
Yeah sucks when he’s the only guy giving you tasks and what else are you going to do?
Excel is pretty awful software.
10-15 years ago it was good, but it just isn’t anymore.
Considering it is being saved in another format, I’d hardly consider this an excel problem.
CSV has existed since before personal computers, much less Microsoft office.
Maybe, by why wouldn’t Excel let uou increase the number of digits in a CSV? The data is currently in Excel, and more digits isn’t incompatible with the CSV format.
Because it’s basically a text file. The data doesn’t exist anymore once you open it as a CSV on another computer. It’d basically just add zeros to the end.
They could probably get that info from the other file, but that would mean getting that person to give it to you again.
Yeah thanks, I didn’t understand the original problem but I’ve got it now 🙂
You can’t increase the decimal precision beyond the limits of the available data which I think is what OP’s coworker wasn’t understanding – unless I’m the one who misunderstood.
The coworker rounded the numerical data during the conversion from xlsx to csv meaning there was less data in the exported csv than in the original Excel file. They seemed to think the data did still exist in the csv but it was being hidden and that they could simply change the precision to unhide it.
Ahhh, the excel format keeps the precision but changes the display to 1 decimal. When exported to CSV, only that 1 decimal is exported, so you can’t bring back what isn’t there. But the original file still has it.
I understand now, thanks! Definitely a coworker problem not an Excel problem then.
Nope. Still an excel problem. Why should changing a display option alter the underlying data on export?
Well, that’s a good point. However, if I wanted to export a CSV with only one decimal place, it would be mighty annoying if changing it to one in Excel didn’t save it like that in the CSV. Unless there was another option to control that.
That’s actually pretty terrible. Can you load the csv and then save it again as an xls? Once it’s loaded, why does it care what the source format was?
the original doc has the math, the csv only has the pre-calculated numbers
you cant recover lost data by just resaving in another format lol
I think you misunderstood the problem.
Is the problem that someone else is wrong and we want to relish in the agony of dealing with it?
As soon as you convert from an .XLS file to a .CSV file, the data and sig figs used to display that data are saved while the math formulas used to calculate that data are erased.
This means that when you try to go from .CSV to .XLS, Excel doesn’t know the original formula that created the data to then be able to display more decimal points. The formula is absolutely necessary to change sig figs of displayed data.
The only other way I can think of that would allow one to change sig figs in .CSV data is if the .XLS file was converted with like the maximum number of sig figs displayed, or let’s say 10-20. Then in a .CSV, you can modify the sig figs to something less, like 0-20.
But I want to say that if you save that .CSV file after the sig fig change, where you original converted it with 10-20 sig figs but then changed them to 0-20, the .CSV overwrites the data and you lose the sig figs that you concatenated.
Result: adding decimal points in a .CSV isn’t possible.
I have a colleague making close to twice my salary struggling with IT…but he’s extremely skilled at his actual job.
But like… saving a PDF should not be considered IT lol
Yeah my bet is that the meme is facetious
Nope it’s not facetious … I’m an ICT professional and I see this regularly.
Ok then, sure it’s extreme but document handling is not necessarily a key (or even important) part of their work. Yes they absolutely shouldn’t need to use 15min or get help to save a document, but if their skills in their actual job are spectacular and they produce the work of two in that area, of course they still should be compensated well. I don’t know your specific case, but this is almost the case I mentioned.
It’s pretty funny how the people who only have computer skills are hating on people who only have their own skills too
Computer support is literally only useful to other humans doing useful stuff
These people have 0 usefulness outside of helping the guy print a pdf and yet they consider themselves so high and mighty
These people have 0 usefulness outside of helping the guy print a pdf…
Until you click on a phishing link.
This is the curse of IT. Perpetually undervalued yet absolutely essential. If IT were ever to disappear, the businesses they support become walking corpses.
It chaps my ass that everyone working in business has grown up with computers being essential to business yet its somehow still acceptable for them to be functionally illiterate in using them.
Sometimes its so fucking bad that the equivalent would be someone being granted a drivers license and given a car but they have no idea how to put it in park, let alone use the brakes.
IT are the Dunedain Rangers protecting The Shire. They’re not popular, they’re barely acknowledged, often scorned, but without their presence The Shire cannot be.
My industry could abandon most technology and we’d be fine but things would just take longer to do 🤷♀️but everyone I know still appreciates and respects IT anyway
Most people just use their computers to accomplish other things in life and then go about their business without developing actual computer skills. The reason yall in IT is cause you were obsessed w computers enough to truly learn how to use them.
You could always learn how to code an awful system that requires IT support if helping people print and plug in cables isn’t rewarding enough
This is like saying Software Developers have a useless skill set, except to make the important, value creating, end users more productive.
I’ve been in IT since it was called something else.
90% of the work I do is to enable other people to do their job.
Before IT, these people did their work on paper, which took more people, and more time, but they still did their work, and my job didn’t exist.
You said it even better
Sad life huh
The fuck else is it? Did you come out your momma’s vajayjay being able to save a pdf?
Lol, it’s just computer literacy. Most jobs require using the computer, saving a file required for the job is part of that job.
Computer literacy is exactly what is taught in IT lessons, just like regular literacy is taught in school as well.
I overheard someone considerably high up in my organization struggling to understand the concept of an email BCC (Blind Carbon Copy).
He was trying to figure out how to notify a large number of people via email without letting them know who else was receiving the email.
Some things may fall under IT but they should really fall under the category of things every professional should understand.
BCC is turning 50 years old next year.
Yup. The key is are they paid to save pdfs? Or are they paid to do other things?
I can save the shit out of some PDFs, but I’ve only ever made one sale in my entire life.
Are they paid to use the toilet to go to the bathroom or are they paid for other things? If they’re paid for other things, they should shit on the floor wherever they happen to be and let the janitors handle that since they’re the ones paid to clean things up.
I liken it to a professional basketball player with a low free throw percentage. If they’re still on the team and in the league despite missing 3 free throws a game, they must be really good at the other stuff.
We just got a new employee at work. She is in her 60s and 100% computer illiterate. I had to give her training on how to use a mouse and how to click on bookmarks to open our shared sheets. She somehow deleted everything on one sheet the first day, but shes getting better. She doesn’t own any computers and her phone is some no name model from 12 years ago. Im kinda impressed shes made it this far.
Fucking up over and over really is the best way to learn how to use computers… I was lucky enough to go through that as a kid/teen so the consequences were pretty meaningless.
I had such a double take reading your username
I assume 1984 reference or is this a word used elsewhere I happened to learn from the book?
I need to start faking computer illiteracy or at least downplaying my level of literacy. Employers notice how quickly I get computer-related tasks done, but then they expect that as my norm while my coworkers are struggling to use any device without a touch screen.
The last new hire I trained was in his mid-twenties and lacked basic tech literacy outside of the iPhone. I asked him to write up a quick protocol using a template I sent him. He typed the text of the Outlook file preview into notepad and went from there. I was baffled.
Right? Any sane e-mail client allows you to directly open edits in your favorite text editor.
Disgusting. At least use vim!
Idk if windows (dad won’t let me swap :( noooooo) supports it plus I can’t learn to do stuff when tired
Heard people need tutorials to close vim nah I’ll stay with n++
You can install nano for powershell
That’s the youngest I’ve heard of someone like that. My grandpa was like that and in his 90s and I still thought he should get a computer for at least banking and stuff.
She must have been in her mid 40’s when the iPhone came out, that’s young enough to be interested and learn about the tech. She must have just actively ignored it or refused out of principle or something.
Age really isn’t an excuse. My mom was in her 70s teaching her school district’s apple tech how to use apple products. And this was like 2018.
Upbringing is the larger factor. Access to computers and technology at a younger age.
In her 40s? Just how old do you think the iPhone is?
Oh wait, oh no,
Yeah, sorry time has passed. Would be cool if it didn’t sometimes
She actually sounds like a treasure. Guide her well, and learn from her what you can.
Followed by listening to them complain about how they are struggling with money because of how much their cars are costing them. Meanwhile I can’t even afford to learn to drive and had to walk or cycle to work in the pissing rain again.
Listening to the personal financial issues of people much wealthier than you is just the worst. I hate how this can distance me from some of my friends even.
Been under a team leader long time ago. She double clicked all web page links. It was the first time I have been silent while witnessing something so outrageous.
Me watching someone who makes three times my salary use Excel for graphic design.
my dude, try having to do a job for someone who makes more that year than you will your entire life, and see them struggle with any simple task.
it doesn’t matter the task. you will shit your gasket at the fact they will make more that year than you will your entire life, and you will not get a tip regardless. it will piss your nugget twice the flip fuck off.
They don’t make that kind of money by being smart. They make it by screwing over everyone else for profit.
No… I’d rather go chill at the ymca
Dean at my college makes 4x my salary, he thinks I personally invented “VPN” to confuse him and make his life difficult
No word of a lie, I worked in a place where HR would print the company credit card statements, load the printed sheets back into the printer scanner, and email them to each employee individually from the copier.
Lamo. That sounds so much more difficult than just…… emailing the statements off the bat. I’m impressed!
I’ve heard of something like that happening because they weren’t allowed to download pdfs from emails, but they were allow to directly send them to the printer.
Stupid brain surgeons, don’t know how to save to pdf, I should make more money than them!
I don’t think I could trust a brain surgeon who can’t save to pdf in this day and age.
Ben Carson comes to mind. Right wing freak who was formerly the director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.
Yeah, I mean, it’s not exactly brain surgery…
If you are a surgeon but, in the year 2026, haven’t learned ‘File>Save As…’ or ‘click the little disk icon’ I doubt your competence to have learned anything else. Saving a file requires far less education and adaptability. I mean, it’s not exactly brain surgery.
“What’s a disk?” – Recently graduated surgeon
“The save icon. The same icon that’s used in every damned piece of software you used in the hopefully better part of two decades of education you got before they slapped a scalpel in your hand. If you can’t recognise it, you probably used chatGPT to fake your way through school and shouldn’t be a surgeon.” - patients of the world
Exhibit A
Not to mention that damn AC vent blowing right on ya
I had a user come to me with a PDF issue my app was generating. They kept getting the document in landscape, and wanted it on portrait. They were the only user with this issue, and it stumped me. I checked the underlying code, and everything was set to portrait mode, except the last page, which contained a sketch and was set to landscape mode.
I asked him to show me exactly what he did when he made the PDF. Instead of just downloading the provided PDF, he had his system set to open it on Adobe Reader. He would then use a PDF printer (Microsoft, or cutePDF) to save the doc. His printer was set to landscape.
Everyone here is bashing in op, but when you have to help the 50eth person who clearly doesn’t even understand the fundamentals of their job, with editing a word file even tho you already sent them the tutorial, it just gets to you. But I guess I did sign up for first level support.
Look, careers aren’t about doing your job well, they’re about being likeable whether or not you’re competent. If people like you you’ll get paid more even if you can’t figure out how to export a word document.
I agree wholeheartedly, OP doesn’t deserve the bashing, meme is dead on. My daily experience.
depends
are they trying to export a PDF from Microsoft Word? because Microsoft makes that difficult nowadays
Can’t you just print and choose “print to pdf” as your “printer”?
you can still do that
it’s buggier than it used to be, though
Yup, super difficult. Its not the default, so no one can find it.
Apparently then it is bad for formatting and reading apps for the visual impaired can not pick up sections when they have been pre assigned (but I didn’t test just saw a real, need confirmation)
It’s really not… There are several pretty straightforward ways to do it and they’re all pretty old standards. Save as > select PDF as the file type. Or if you have Adobe Reader/Acrobat installed, word has a button right under save as that says Save As Adobe PDF. Or you can print to PDF using the Adobe print function in the printers. Lastly windows has a built in PDF printer by default. All of these work pretty damn reliably. If you can’t save a PDF from a word doc, it’s either your computer or you.
You’re showing your privilege lol
When you save an office file to PDF and you are in a OneDrive environment, it doesn’t save it locally - it saves it to the cloud, and then downloads it locally. it’s fucked up
I’m not going to fault people for having trouble when the “save this file as PDF” option doesnt result in a PDF immediately in the save directory
Interesting considering I can save as a PDF while offline
Apparently work computers are fucked up beyond comprehension
God those must be NASTY to use
if I remember next week, I’ll try to save one while offline and see what happens
I can tell you that if I use “save as PDF” while online with onedrive not running (whether because I shut it down or because it crashed and didn’t restart itself), the pdf will not show up locally for me
Isn’t it just alt,f,e,a?
Control-s save as>pdf is how I do but I’m not professional I’m teen
Still seeing classmates open chrome, search “google” in the search bar, click the link, just to end where they started is infuriating as fuck
Now combine this ordeal with getting them to properly sign the damn thing.
