A case in which an employee reported that ``Excel does not work'' was due to the Excel beginner's manual
Excel spreadsheet software and similar spreadsheet tools are used in many workplaces, and students are taught how to use them at school. The Register, an overseas media outlet, introduced a case in the 1990s, shortly after Excel was introduced, in which employees reported that ``Excel did not work'' due to the ``Excel Beginner's Manual.'' I am.
User read the manual, still couldn't make 'Excel' work • The Register
Jeremy (pseudonym) worked in a workplace related to ``national infrastructure'' in the 1990s, and was involved in supporting many account managers . The account managers have a wealth of industry experience and knowledge, and are excellent at communicating in the office, which Jeremy described as ``decent and fun people to work with.''
However, many account managers are middle-aged and older, nearing the end of their careers, and when they were young, PCs were not yet as popular. As a result, account managers had to learn about PCs themselves and productivity software such as Excel until the latter half of their careers.
Jeremy was responsible for creating invoices, presentation materials, and reports. 'A lot of my work involved using Excel (then new Excel 97) to link and summarize pieces of data using things like VLOOKUP and SUMIF.' I have developed a reputation for being 'reasonably competent,''' Jeremy said.
One day, an account manager heard about Jeremy's reputation and asked for help saying, ``Excel isn't working.'' When Jeremy actually looked at the account manager's PC, a screen that looked like Excel was indeed displayed on the screen, but when he clicked on the cell, no border was displayed to indicate that it was ready for input. , even when I clicked on the menu bar it didn't work.
When Jeremy tried to close Excel, it turned out that the PC was actually opening Word, not Excel. ``That's when the mystery was solved,'' said Jeremy, who recalled that one of his colleagues had created ``a Word document explaining how to use Excel.''
An Excel manual created by a colleague included several screenshots of Excel screens that could be clicked to enlarge them to make it easier to understand. This enlarged image was just the right size to be mistaken for the real Excel, so when an account manager unfamiliar with PCs clicked on the manual's screenshot, he mistakenly thought that ``Excel had opened.'' The account manager was using trial and error with the image as it was, so it was reported that ``Excel does not work''.
When Jeremy explained the problem, it became clear that it was a simple misunderstanding and it became a joke. In the end, the solution was to paste a link into the Word document so that the user could open the real Excel from the manual.
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