A little detective work traced the problem to default date format conversions and floating-point format conversions in the very useful Excel program package. The date conversions affect at least 30 gene names; the floating-point conversions affect at least 2,000 if Riken identifiers are included. These conversions are irreversible; the original gene names cannot be recovered.

Yet another reason not to use Excel as your "database".
posted by orthogonality on Mar 4, 2009 - 153 comments

Bartlomiej Dzik hosts a library of games to play in Excel, sorted by genre, along with a number of resources for those who wish to make their own.
posted by Upton O'Good on Jan 13, 2009 - 5 comments

A 3d graphics engine written in Excel. Money shot on page 4. Blatantly stolen from seanyboy.
posted by signal on Mar 6, 2008 - 32 comments

Resolver One looks and feels like an Excel clone, except that it stores all the data and formulas as a Python program. You can add more code, or export the whole thing. It's in public beta now, and the commercial release will be free for open source and personal projects.
posted by signal on Dec 17, 2007 - 38 comments

Is Microsoft the latest victim of binary prefix confusion? [via TechAmok]
posted by Fezboy! on Sep 27, 2007 - 26 comments

In the world of conversation killers, talking about Excel to the average person ranks up there with the best. At the same time, there is always a chance that you wish you could have that conversation at work when it gets down to the wire. Even as a pro, you might need that brush up on Array Functions, calculation tricks, VBA examples or some examples from one of the well known authors on Excel. There is also no shortage of people who dedicate their working lives to this arcane program and are more than willing to assist others for free by posting solved issues on their websites. People like David McRitchie, OzGrid, Rob Bovey, Ron de Bruin, John Walkenbach, Dick Kusleika, Joseph Rubin and Chip Pearson.

Or if you just want to be a Debbie Downer at the next party, just take page from any of the following, memorize it. and recite it when faced with that nudge you don't want to talk to: Excel Support, Jon Peltier, Colo's Junk Room, Scriptorium, Andrew's Excel Tips, Andy Pope, Anthony's VBA Page, Rodney Powell, Array Formulas, Erlandsen Data Consulting, Excel-it, ExcelUser, JKP's Excel Page, John Lacher, McGimpsey, Bill Jelen, Stephen Bullen, Tushar Mehta, VBusers.com, The Excel Nexus, The Excel Logic Page, and Anthoney Does Excel. It’s a fast and easy way to ward off lounge lizards.
posted by lampshade on Aug 18, 2007 - 42 comments

Mark Wieczorek has put together some graphs of US federal revenue and spending and the US trade deficit, with a minimum of editorializing. They're shown using nominal dollars, real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, and as a percentage of GDP.
posted by russilwvong on Jul 11, 2006 - 33 comments

New invention: A computer-based drum machine. In Microsoft Excel.
posted by loquacious on Dec 21, 2005 - 31 comments

Security, the TSA, and the No-Fly List You would think that our National Security apparatus would be like the TV series "24", with the most ingenious and sophisticated technology available. You would be wrong. Disclaimer: TSA is not an intelligent intelligence agency. Here's a blurb from the resume of the designer(Kenneth Mack) of the application the airline industry uses for *PDF* managing their employee data and the cross-checking them with the no-fly list:

- Sr. Developer: Developed a program [for Goddard Technologies] that uses the "No-Fly List" Excel spreadsheet, provided by the FAA and the database of badged employees to permute the name combinations. It takes into consideration multiple first and middle names, with Soundex and the various "initial" combinations. This program reduced the time for comparison from 3 days to 10 minutes.

The scary yet interesting part of all of this is that the No-Fly List is nothing more than a password-protected spreadsheet (see this PDF). One would guess our Government's geeks would know that it's a bad idea to send email attachments containing social security numbers and dates of birth, unencrypted, over the internets, even if they might be terrorists.
posted by rzklkng on Jul 15, 2005 - 30 comments

The History of Probability - Excel Version Huge detailed timeline. [via Roll the Bones]
posted by srboisvert on Jul 11, 2004 - 2 comments

Pacelman. Pacman for Excel. [via Edge (print edition)]
posted by davehat on Dec 2, 2003 - 17 comments