Forum: Author Hangout

Basically as they continue to 'improve' the Windows OS and come out with new 'improved' versions of Office, they're coming out with a different file ending designation, to make it easier on their end for software compatibility.

Honestly, they've only changed the extension (from 3 to 4 letters) once, so it's hardly "as they continue ... they're coming out with a different file [type] designation."

That said, the warning to "save using" the newer format isn't because of ANYTHING in the document, it's only warning you that some unidentified attribute won't be saved (or even recognized) in the future. (i.e. pay it no heed, though they do do warn me when I try to save image descriptions in a plain .doc chapter.)

That said, the warning to "save using" the newer format isn't because of ANYTHING in the document, it's only warning you that some unidentified attribute won't be saved (or even recognized) in the future.

It isn't even that. You can open an older .xls file and do nothing except try to do a save as to another name as a .xls and you'll get that same warning, even though there couldn't be anything in the document not compatible with the old binary file type.

That warning is literally nothing more than "hey you are trying to save something in a format that isn't our preferred format."

.xlsx is more compatible with other companies' software and open source, like LibreOffice.

Personally, I'd prefer to save in .ods(?) than .xlsx and .odt rather than .docx

Personally, I'd prefer to save in .ods(?) than .xlsx and .odt rather than .docx

.ods and odt are the 'real' open formats but Microsoft has deliberately implemented it poorly and still sets their own formats as default. Fortunately LibreOffice can read any MS format more accurately than MS does ;)
Have a broken file that MS Office can't open? Try it with LO, there's a good chance it can open it so you can secure all or at least part of your work.

Personally, I'd prefer to save in .ods(?) than .xlsx and .odt rather than .docx

I keep copies of each, to make trading files with my editors, but if I ONLY used .ods, I'm confident that I'd ONLY receive editors from a single proofer. :(

It's easier to import a know format, than it is getting old-hands to switch formats!

.xlsx is more compatible with other companies' software and open source, like LibreOffice.

I can't think of a single source that won't accept a .doc file, while I know of many (most notably Smashwords) that won't accept .docx under any circumstances. But then, Smashwords wrote their Meatgrinder processor over a decade ago, and as far as I can tell, never updated it, as the site's creator wrote the code, and refuses to allow anyone else to ever touch it, letting the entire site slowly degrade ever since. :(

Plus, I've heard of performance degradation of .xlsx over .xls (and also .docx over .doc, hence type typo in my previous comment) for a long, long time.

I can't think of a single source that won't accept a .doc file

Some versions of M$word will not accept .doc files written by some other versions of M$word; I remember this as being a major problem around v6. If they can't get it right when they control both ends of the transaction, what hope does anyone else stand?

If they can't get it right when they control both ends of the transaction, what hope does anyone else stand?

You are assuming that it wasn't intentional.

British English.

Could you spell that Bringlish? Or maybe Brenglish. At least the abbreviation.

It might be listing oldest first.

The first mistake they made was using Excel in the first place. For such data you should always use a proper database, not a glorified calculator.

If all they want to do is use calculator functions, why should it be necessary to use a database.

M$ have always kept row and column limits lower than necessary to coerce user towards their database products.

Who said they only wanted to do calculations? They have to store a vast amount of data, that's what databases are designed for. From that data you can can calculate anything you want. You can even link Excel to the database for fancy graphs. In this case it's plain and simple: Excel is definitely the wrong medium. It was probably chosen because 'that's what we know', not because it's the best tool.

Where did you ever get the idea that MS intentionally kept the row and column limits low to drive customers to MSSQL? I have never heard that before and I'm in the IT business for a very long time.

Yes, Access is still a thing, but it's not available in most of their ranges.

However they have a much higher end SQL product, the name of which escapes me. Then there's SQL Server.
M$ has almost always had a policy to shift customers up the product stack as it were.

I'm surprised. I thought it was common knowledge. Their low row and column limits (compared to competing products) have always been a common complaint and M$'s response has always been to advise users to move to a database.

Yes, there have always been complaints because people wanted to keep using Excel even if the datasets became so big that Excel wasn't the right tool anymore. The correct advise is indeed to move up to a product that is the right tool but I don't believe that they kept limits to force people to advance to a higher level product. It's user inertia that created the limit problem, not marketing.

Let's face it, the latest limits for Excel are 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. If you have to work with that many records you should not use Excel. That's definitely not pushing users to a higher level product because they should have upgraded long before reaching that limit.

The correct advise

So... why the bold? To point out that you're using a awkward phrasing in order to use the verb form of the noun 'advice'?

I really get annoyed when I see verb form spellings used for noun forms and vice versa - in stories, it's more likely using the verb form 'breathe' when the noun 'breath' is meant, or the reverse, but advice/advise tend to come up too...

tend to come up too

I recall cloth/clothe/clothing getting mixed up.

So... why the bold? To point out that you're using a awkward phrasing in order to use the verb form of the noun 'advice'?

I was responding to Awnlee's sentence "Their low row and column limits (compared to competing products) have always been a common complaint and M$'s response has always been to advise users to move to a database.". I made 'advise' bold to make the distinction from 'Marketing pressure'.

By-the-way, I'm not an author and English is not my native language, so I'm not allowed to have typos in a forum post?

Speaking of which, is MSAccess still going?

Yes, but at this point, it is only available in the very expensive(if you only want one copy) enterprise edition of MS Office.

I've not hit the column limit, but I did often hit the row limit (32ki) in .xls. Luckily most of the datasets did not need to be processed en-block but could be split (using a programming editor) into smaller chunks; for the others I hacked a throwaway utility to select every Nth line so a weeks worth of data could be graphed at once and/or 'interesting' bits could be selected for extraction and closer perusal.

I've not hit the column limit, but I did often hit the row limit (32ki) in .xls. Luckily most of the datasets did not need to be processed en-block but could be split (using a programming editor) into smaller chunks; for the others I hacked a throwaway utility to select every Nth line so a weeks worth of data could be graphed at once and/or 'interesting' bits could be selected for extraction and closer perusal.

Why didn't you store the data in something simple as Sqlight and connect Excel to that database for your graphs? That would have solved any limit problems.