Your Puny Spreadsheet is No Match for Barack Obama's Monster Digits
Microsoft Excel, the bane of TPS report-producing cubicle monkeys everywhere, has finally been brought to its knees. In what may be the greatest sign of Hope we've seen yet, the spreadsheets that chip away at your soul Mon.-Fri. have been given the smackdown by Senator Barack Obama…
A milestone of sorts was reached earlier this year, when Obama, the Illinois senator whose revolutionary online fundraising has overwhelmed Clinton, filed an electronic fundraising report so large it could not be processed by popular basic spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel 2003 and Lotus 1-2-3.
Those programs can't download data files with more than 65,536 rows or 256 columns.
Obama's January fundraising report, detailing the $23 million he raised and $41 million he spent in the last three months of 2007, far exceeded 65,536 rows listing contributions, refunds, expenditures, debts, reimbursements and other details. It was the first report to confound basic database programs since 2001, when the Federal Election Commission began directly posting candidates' fundraising reports online in an effort to make political money more accessible and transparent to voters.
By March, the reports filed by Clinton, a New York senator who attributes Obama's victories in several states to her own lack of money, also could no longer be downloaded into spreadsheets using basic applications.
Take that, you #N/A! spreadsheet program. Now there's no way to keep track of the candidates' fundraising: ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Wild West of data. Lawless rows and columns will be running free, beyond the reach of the stodgy number-sheriffs, and there is nothing you can do about it…
If you want to comb through Obama or Clinton's cash, you either need to divide and import their reports section-by-section (a time-consuming and mind-numbing process) or purchase a more powerful database application, such as Microsoft Access or Microsoft Excel 2007, both of which retail for $229.
Two hundred and twenty-nine dollars! No one's ever gonna be able to come up with that much money. It's not like we know some guy with $23 million lying around.
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Tanita,
Your choice of forum for this important message is very curious. If you have any further damning evidence of this serious crime (treason presumably) you should not hesitate in reporting Mr Stuart to Microsoft so that he can receive the punishment he so richly deserves. You're absolutley right – it's just not funy!
Jon Stuart, we used to like you.
Now you've lost respect for supporting "empty suite" – Obama
and bashing Hillary. We understand you have young people who watcn your shaw, you need to say something they like.
But….. It is not funy anymore. Everything you are telling about Clinton's agly, tasteless, stupid. You are jew who supports person(Obama) who is anti-semit and sympathizer of muslims and hates Israel. Apparently Jon you are stupid traitor!!!
Microsoft SQL Express is free, and to my knowledge is only limited by your hard drive space. Don't waste money on Access or push yourself to the next limitation with a newer version of excel.
Why are people still processing data with excel?