Every now and then, documentation in source code requires an ASCII table. Sometimes table cells are spanning multiple rows or/and column.
TL;DR: The tools I tried did not support that, so manual labour is still needed.
Archive for the ‘Excel’ Category
Generating ASCII-tables with spanning cells: manual labour still needed
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/05/28
Posted in ASCII, ASCII art / AsciiArt, Development, Documentation Development, Encoding, Excel, Fun, HTML, Office, Power User, Software Development, Web Development | Tagged: 2 | Leave a Comment »
Google Sheets actually has a ton of Excel compatible functions; wish the User Experience was better though
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/14
I have been using Microsoft Excel since it beat the Quattro Pro limitation of rows and columns with the version 12.0, on Windows more commonly named Excel 2007 (which also introduced a fully new user experience including the vertical screen estate eating Ribbon – the main reason I like 16:10 monitors over 16:9 ones) and on Mac as Excel 2008.
It means I have like 20 years of Excel experience not just on what it can technically can do (see my Excel posts) but especially on the user experience bit.
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Posted in Development, Excel, Google, GoogleDocs, GoogleSheets, Office, Office 2007, Power User, Software Development, User Experience (ux) | Tagged: div | Leave a Comment »
Only available on Window, but sometimes useful, the Excel FILTERXML function
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/09
Some links on the [Wayback/Archive] FILTERXML function – Microsoft Support.
It is only available on Windows (because of the underlying XPath libraries used, I think it is MSXML), and “only” as of Excel 2013, but still can be useful.
Some links below on FILTERXML and related XPath information so I can more easily find their content back.
Notes:
FILTERXMLonly supports XPath 1.0- The quotes are huge, for one because I don’t use Excel enough to be an expert, but have enough software experience to sometimes want to use complex concepts in Excel. Having all this in one place helps me with that goal.
- You need to ensure your data is either XML in a well-formed document format, or you can translate your data to well-formed XML.
The links and quotes starting with the question that sparked my interest:
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Posted in Development, Excel, Office, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office VBA, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, XML, XML/XSD, XPath | Leave a Comment »
Excel: operations involving the last occurence of a substring (with examples getting the current Worksheet, Workbook and file/directory path)
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/02
Last month I wrote about CELL function looks interesting but beware: language nightmares coming up….
There I mentioned both formulas from [Wayback/Archive] Get sheet name only – Excel formula | Exceljet and [Wayback/Archive] Insert the current Excel file name, path, or worksheet in a cell – Microsoft Support failing to deliver the expected results
an official Microsoft example of obtaining the Worksheet name which I suspected would not work on systems allowing ] in path names. And indeed it is true: that case fails on both MacOS and Windows in the same way.
Here you see the failures of both the ExcelJet function and the ones from Microsoft Support on two operating systems:
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CELL function looks interesting but beware: language nightmares coming up…
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/26
A while ago I bumped into a very promising [Wayback/Archive] CELL function – Microsoft Support which exposes all sorts of interesting information on an Excel WorkSheet cell including address and filename.
But then this “disclaimer” threw me off:
Note: Formulas that use CELL have language-specific argument values and will return errors if calculated using a different language version of Excel. For example, if you create a formula containing CELL while using the Czech version of Excel, that formula will return an error if the workbook is opened using the French version. If it is important for others to open your workbook using different language versions of Excel, consider either using alternative functions or allowing others to save local copies in which they revise the CELL arguments to match their language.
It means the CELL function is only useful if the spreadsheet containing it will only ever be used in a single language: say goodbye to portability.
That’s a real bummer as it would have simplified formulas like =ADDRESS(ROW(E7), COLUMN(E7)) into =CELL("address", E7) both resulting $E$7.
The big problem is that “consider either using alternative functions” is hardly possible as many of the functions have no alternative, for instance using the CELL function is the only way to get the name of the current worksheet (prepended by the filename) as =CELL("filename") returns Macintosh HD:Users:jeroenp:Downloads:[Workbook1.xlsx]Sheet1.
Note however:
Filename (including full path) of the file that contains reference, as text. Returns empty text (“”) if the worksheet that contains reference has not yet been saved.
The basic syntax of it is CELL(info_type, [reference]), where info_type and some of the return values being language dependent:
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It might be time for me to upgrade to a newer Excel version because of some new notation and functions like TAKE and TRIMRANGE, or does it?
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/03/23
Over the last decades, I hardly needed to upgrade Excel. For a very long time I stayed at Excel 2003, as the ribbon interface introduced with Office 2007 (version 12) was horrible (it still is, especially since 19:10 monitors are gone and the ribbon takes too much vertical screen estate).
After that, I needed newer features so I upgraded to Excel 2013 (version 15) mainly because it ditched Multiple-document interface (MDI) and I like SDI over MDI a lot, and Office 2013 was largely compatible with Office for Mac 2011 (version 14).
Mostly recovered from my cancer treatments, I noticed that MacOS ditched 32-bit support in MacOS 11 Big Sur, which meant I could not use Office 2011 any more (it was 32-bit x86 only) so in 2022 I upgraded all my office installations to Office 2021 (up in the version 16.* range as starting with Office 2016 the major version number stayed 16.minor).
I might actually upgrade to Office 2024 (version 16.many) soon despite the major version 16, finally Excel has started sped up new development of new functions and features, of which the ones below are very interesting: they will make my largest spreadsheets a lot simpler and therefore easier to maintain:
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Posted in Excel, Office, Office 2003, Office 2011 for Mac, Office 2013, Office 2021, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Excel: sorting an array on 3 different columns using functions
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/09/09
Given Excel is the most popular functional language (see the video under my post “Everybody should have an obsession with Lisp-like language at least once in their life” @KevlinHenney), this post is on sorting with Excel functions.
I had an array in Excel starting at row 2 (to exclude the headings) where I had to sort on 3 different columns: C, A, B (or numerically 3, 1, 2) so [Wayback/Archive] sorting – How to multi level sort an array in excel, using formulas? I am aware about the way, using SORT button on DATA tab – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] Armaan Gohil and [Wayback/Archive] Jos Woolley) didn’t fully apply but did put me on the right track as I wasn’t aware that the SORT function allows to specify multiple columns using an embedded array argument.
The functions that worked:
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Posted in Development, Excel, Functional Programming, Office, Power User, Reddit, SocialMedia, Software Development | Tagged: VALUE | Leave a Comment »
Belastingaangifte 2024 met Excel gratis downloaden | Computer Idee
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/30
Let op:
- deze Excel spreadsheets werken alleen correct op Windows en Engelse of Nederlandse taal-/regioinstellingen. Op MacOS en OpenOffice kan het zijn dat ze niet behoorlijk werken
- inloggen op Mijn Belastingdienst vandaag lukt vaak niet of is heel traag en dan kom je uit op [Wayback/Archive] U kunt nu niet inloggen op Mijn Belastingdienst
Mijn Belastingdienst is tijdelijk niet bereikbaar. Dit komt doordat het maximale aantal mensen is ingelogd. Wij vragen u om later terug te komen. Onze excuses voor het ongemak.
of daar na inlogpoging met de melding:
Er is een technische fout opgetreden. U bent automatisch uitgelogd.
Probeer later nog een keer in te loggen. Of bel de Belastingtelefoon 0800 – 0543.Neemt u contact op met de Belastingdienst over deze foutmelding? De volgende gegevens kunnen helpen bij het opsporen van de oorzaak:
- Foutcode: 96762438
- Tijdstip van melding: 30 augustus 2025 om 14:32
[Wayback/Archive] 483877656-3984fa77-7838-4c92-ae50-fa530cf77255.png (1070×224)
of na inloggen deze melding:
Let op!
Probleem Mijn Belastingdienst
Door een technische storing gaat het inzenden van aangiftes niet altijd goed. Bij het inzenden kan er een technische fout optreden. We werken aan een oplossing. Excuses voor het ongemak.[Wayback/Archive] 483878240-0c9e5c63-98aa-4d19-bde1-f53a56f082a3.png (810×111)
Met dank aan het commentaar van Leon onder mijn blog-post Belastingaangifte 2023 met Excel gratis downloaden | Computer Idee is hier op de valreep de versie voor aangifte 2024:
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Posted in Development, Excel, HTML, Office, Power User, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Office suites trick I was unaware off: you can use images as background of shapes, then distort by moving the corner points
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/26
Video thumbnail
The below example is in Excel, but it holds for many other drawing tools in other office suites as well (like the ones in OpenOffice and successors like LibreOffice, Apple Pages in iWork, and others from the list of office suites):
- Insert a shape
- Move the corners so it covers the area you want a screenshot in
- Modify the shape background to contain the screenshot as background
(you can exchange steps 2 and 3 if you wish, and even go for more complex shapes – including ones where you can add corner points – to better fit the area where you want the distorted screenshot to appear).
Example in (typo was indeed in the tweet) [Wayback/Archive] Excel Dictionary on X: “Are you ready for this Excel tip? Get ready to learn how to easily scew images. 🤯”: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Excel, Office, Power Point, Power User, Visio, Word | Leave a Comment »
Person 1: The glass is 1/2 full; Person 2: The glass is 1/2 empty; Excel: …
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/24
Why everyone hates Excel data entry:
[Archive.is] Andrew R on Twitter: “Person 1: The glass is 1/2 full Person 2: The glass is 1/2 empty Excel: The glass is the 1st of February”
--jeroen
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Posted in Excel, Office, Power User | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 