When a calendar is not a calendar
Posted by bstevens615@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 39 comments
Happened this week. I’m a M365 SysAdmin. A ticket was escalated to me where the user wanted to modify a calendar’s permissions. Ok. Not a big deal. But I could not locate the calendar.
So doing what any good IT professional would do, I asked for a call over Teams and then requested the user share their screen. Once connected and seeing what they see, I made the request. “Please show me how you access this calendar.”I’m expecting Outlook > Calendar > specific calendar. But nope!
The user opened File Explorer, navigated to the File Server, and through several folders. The last folder led to a file called 2026 Calendar. And it’s an Excel file! No wonder I couldn’t locate the calendar anywhere in Exchange!
After that I suggested that maybe we should consider a real calendar for future use. 🤦♂️
ScheduleCorrect3412@reddit
I once knew somebody, who reserved a large meeting room for a year in yotal, trying to make that meeting room int their office. Slightly impressed at the attemp.
MyFavoriteInsomnia@reddit
Creative, if nothing else.
GeekBrownBear@reddit
Never underestimate the ability for a user to do things in the most complicated way possible.
EricCoon@reddit
I'm a IT professional and I do my personal calendar also in Excel... 😅
A) I get the calendar in a format i want, I see all my appointments on one view B) Since work eats most of my time, it's usually enough to schedule one to two appointments per day C) I never found a calendar which really clicked with me
zeus204013@reddit
Maybe some high customizable calendars has to be invented...
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
Excel seems like the most complicated way possible for a job - until you realize that the person knows Excel, and nothing else can handle the VBA or function.
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
Why is it always Excel that seems to be the go-to choice for people to overcomplicate things?
I'm not even talking about using it because of the VBA functionality. I've seen people using it for:
LOOKUPs.My favourite by far though was from my sister. She had asked me to make a small design for a save-the-date for her. I asked her if there was anything she had seen online as inspiration, and told her she could send me links to images on an email.
What I go was an email with an attached Excel doc. Inside the Excel doc was a single thumbnail image (not even the original image) of something she found on Google images.
She said it was because "she knew Excel".
There is no helping these people. Excel is their hammer, and everything is a nail. And if it's not nail shaped, they're hitting the damn thing anyway.
K-o-R@reddit
Guilty. I think it's because I can basically "draw with the keyboard".
zelda_888@reddit
Me too.
Knit stitches are not quite square-- they're actually a smidge wider than they are tall, roughly 5:3. It is possible to pay money to get knitting-specific graph paper with correctly proportioned grids for charting colorwork patterns. It is also possible to pay money to get specialized knit design software.
I just work in Excel by setting the column widths a little larger than the row heights and using different letters for different yarn colors.
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
Okay, I'm not as far in as your sister, but I've made charts (Gantt and other), presentations (usually based on data in hidden sheets of the same workbook so that the presentation could be done live based on real data), DBs (I prefer INDEX(MATCH()) to ?LOOKUP()).
Never really done pixel art, but if I was going to, Excel isn't the worst way I could do it if I didn't want to use Paint.
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
All of those uses are the worst ways you can do this though.
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
Gantt and other charts: Sure, but I'd need to be able to pull live data from an Excel (or LibreOffice) worksheet to update the project status.
Pixel Art: Paint's pencil, line tool, and grid aren't as easy as Excel's grid, cell borders, and background colors. Plus, I can set the cell/"pixel" size easily. I can do a great Paint-By-Numbers and make it printable on any number of sheets.
Presentations: I need to be able to go from plugging in data to making my client/exec team presentation in a short time, with live data. I don't have prep time. So unless Powerpoint or LibreOffice Impress can directly update arbitrary sections of the presentation on load based on a spreadsheet, it's easier to set up the presentation format once and have the data running in the background.
DBs: Agreed, but every time I've tried to use a proper DB tool, it ends up being a pain in the rump. Excel/LibreOffice Calc allows me to build from the ground up and organically scale as needed across sheets and books, and as with the presentations, I can build "dashboards" (aka the idiot-friendly views) out of live data. It's a different paradigm in how things get built and what's needed. If you know what your topmost goal is, use a DB. If you're working bottom-up and building, a spreadsheet tool is the best way. If there were a better onramp in the various DB software so that the spreadsheet work doesn't get eliminated, it would help.
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
Why are you pulling data from Excel to update a projects status? This is pointing to another misuse of Excel as a database perhaps.
This isn't really true. There's no similar paint tool in Excel to colour cells with the drag of a mouse in any arbitrary direction.
A pixel is a square, which is less easy to set in Excel and you have to eyeball it as close as you can, plus have good motor skills to accomplish it. Versus Paint where a pixel is a pixel, and you don't need to mess around.
It can. MS Office has had OLE embedding since the Windows 95 days. In the modern era, it's got many more ways to include dynamic data. This is absolutely a skill issue.
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
The number of problems I've had with OLE or dynamic embeds in Powerpoint is nearly equal to the number of times I've used it.
As far as the pixel art, I don't click and drag at all. I just use "set column width" and "set row height", and type it in an equal number of onscreen pixels. Again, the main use case I have is creating paint-by-numbers style sheets, to entertain kids in the rare occasions I have to deal with them.
Pulling data from Excel for a project status allows me to automate the report so that no one has to go and manually decide whether the data matches the next step or not. Either it fits the match criteria or it doesn't.
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
Still sounding like a skill issue.
I think you're missing the point, and falling into the trap of using Excel for everything even when it's not the best fit. That data very likely didn't start in an Excel doc, it likely started elsewhere and was exported as an Excel doc. There are always better ways then exporting the data from one system, generating an Excel doc, and then using that to generate yet another document. It's a fragile system, and needlessly convoluted.
Ich_mag_Kartoffeln@reddit
Because Excel is so amazingly flexible, and deals so magnificently with all the misuse.
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
I think Microsoft building in so many capabilities to make it so flexible is also one of its greatest shortcomings.
For example, its core functionality, working with numbers, is broken in many places. Just a casual look online shows all of the ways it breaks around data that's comprimsed of numerical characters that it interprets incorrectly, from credit card numbers, phone numbers, dates, etc.
Then there's the other core part of its functionality: handling tabular data. It is absolute dog shit at opening the most basic of spreadsheet formats: the humble CSV.
But yes, let's add in loads of database functions and even a mini flight simulator, because that's absolutely what people need in a spreadsheet application... /s
androshalforc1@reddit
Because it’s often already on the computer
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
So is paint, yet people do pixel art in Excel. The clipboard is already part of every OS, yet people paste an image into Excel to attach to an email. Etc...
showyerbewbs@reddit
I'm not sure if the question is rhetorical or not, but I've had training classes the focus on the psychology of a support call.
One thing I've learned by paying attention and listening to other calls, people "live" in their workflows. As tech support / sysadmin / software support etc. we live in the technical side of the bubble. Gears mesh, water boils, servers talk, etc. That is OUR frame of reference and we work within that sphere.
Someone who is more familiar with achieving a goal with Excel, Borland, Access, SAP, etc. will work within what they know to attempt to get their cheese. To them, the path doesn't matter but the goal.
One thing I say as a disarming tactic is, "Hey, you learned something new today, that's not so bad and remember; The best thing about computers is there's 7 different ways to do something. The worst thing about computers.....We can't know all of them for everything"
AshleyJSheridan@reddit
I understand that, I really do, up to a point. The example of my sister copy pasting a thumbnail image into an Excel doc, which she then attached to an email, that just seems to be on the extreme end of someone not just not knowing anything but Excel, but of someone going out of their way to force Excel into a situation it had no right to be in.
NDaveT@reddit
Or to use idiosyncratic terminology and expect you to understand what they're talking about.
Head_Razzmatazz7174@reddit
Some end users have taken Rube Goldberg's whimsy to an art form.
1947-1460@reddit
They wanted to change permissions to share it??
bstevens615@reddit (OP)
They wanted to limit write access.
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
I think that's responsible. You should have done it, and help the user transition to a live calendar - Excel calendars have features that Outlook or whatever doesn't.
bstevens615@reddit (OP)
This wasn’t even an Excel calendar. It’s was giant cells formatted for the month. It might as well have been a Word doc. 🤣
UristImiknorris@reddit
So limit write access to nobody and help the user transition to a live calendar.
fresh-dork@reddit
don't tell him, but you can put one of those in there
itenginerd@reddit
My wife's office did their shared calendaring in a word document till last year. Its crazy times out there some places.
dannybau87@reddit
Even the most well meaning user often has blinders on when raising a ticket.
Oh did I not mention I was talking about a specfiic application I'm in?
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
Everyone forgets that they're silo'ed until they see the walls. It's the business version of the Parable of the Cave.
Langager90@reddit
Joke's on you! I'm a Frog in a Well.
dannybau87@reddit
Lol those ancient Greeks really know their stuff. People do often get upset when you point out they are in a cave
NotTheOnlyGamer@reddit
As someone recently forced to move caves at work... I want my original shadow wall back. I hate peeling back the curtain.
showyerbewbs@reddit
Best I can do is three double chests all filled with Diorite.
P5ychokilla@reddit
At least the webcam didn't come on and a sheet of paper hove into view
HMS_Hexapuma@reddit
Reminds me of the time I wanted to book out a room for a maintenance engineer, so I went to our organisations resource booker and filled it out. A few days later I happened to mention to someone else who regularly used the room that I'd booked it. They were very puzzled and then told me that the three people who used the room the most had created their own, separate, invite-only calendar for the room and it was actually booked solid for weeks.
I was not pleased.
harrywwc@reddit
what is this sorcery‽