00:00What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to another video.
00:02Today, we're going to talk about why data analysts hate using Excel.
00:11Now, some of you guys out there may be really confused right now because you love
00:15Excel and you kind of assumed everybody else loved Excel as well, but you would be wrong
00:20because I think the people who really love Excel are the people who are just getting started in
00:25Excel and they just really love it because it can do so many things and it's really easy to use.
00:29It has a really nice UI.
00:30I think those people are just people who haven't used Excel enough because when you use Excel enough,
00:35you start finding a lot of things that are wrong with it.
00:38And that brings us to the very first thing that I hate about Excel,
00:41and that would be the data limitation and the performance issues that you have within Excel.
00:46If you've used Excel long enough, you know that you can encounter a dataset that is so big,
00:50it takes up every single row in the entire Excel spreadsheet.
00:54And when you do this, God forbid, you try to actually filter on something
00:58and you could be waiting there for literally hours, or it will just completely not respond
01:03and it will check out. It'll be like, you are never going to get this filter put on your data.
01:07It is probably one of the most frustrating things because what happens is I exit out of the Excel,
01:12I pull the Excel back up, and then for whatever reason, I try it again and again,
01:17and it just keeps not working. And I think that Excel is somehow going to fix itself or get better,
01:22but it doesn't. And it just every single time frustrates me to no end.
01:26So for smaller amounts of data, Excel is really great.
01:29But when you start working with a lot more data, Excel just really cannot handle it well.
01:34It becomes extremely, extremely frustrating.
01:37The next thing that I hate about Excel is version control.
01:40Now, I didn't really get into version control or really start using or understanding version control
01:45until about three or four years of being a data analyst.
01:48But now that I've been using it for a while, I honestly am really mad that Excel hasn't come up
01:52with a way to really handle version control well. Yes, Excel does have this thing where you can kind
01:57of revert back to a previous thing, but it doesn't always work. And if you save it in a different
02:01place,
02:01it doesn't always save that previous version control. So it's not a perfect system whatsoever.
02:06Although it does have some version of version control.
02:09There are times where I start digging into data and I start doing all these things,
02:13and I save it in a different place and I send it to somebody and I do all these things.
02:16And then I realize I did a bunch of this stuff wrong. I want the raw data.
02:21And I just, I completely forgot to save that raw data in a different file.
02:27And I just overwrote all of that raw data. It has happened way too many times,
02:31and then I can't revert it back. And it frustrates me to no end.
02:35And so I guess what I am saying or nay pleading is that Microsoft fixes this. And if anybody knows
02:40how to actually get better version control in Microsoft with another tool or anything,
02:43shoot me a message. I would love to hear it. Before we go any further, I'm going to give a
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03:32huge shout out to Rapids by NVIDIA for sponsoring this video.
03:35The next thing that I personally hate about Excel is having to use it to work with other team members
03:40in other departments or just anybody in general. It is great when I can just use it on my computer
03:46and save it as weird names as I normally do. But then when I try to start working with other
03:51team
03:51members or other people, it does not work well. This isn't Google Sheets. This isn't something that
03:56is online that I can actually type something and they'll see it or they'll, you know, be able to
04:00know what I'm doing. I'm doing my own work over here. They're doing their own work over here.
04:04And then when they send it to me, I then have to say, oh geez, they did something else. I
04:09have to
04:09completely change my file to then merge it with their file. And it honestly has taken years off of
04:14my life. The amount of stress and frustration that that alone has caused me. At this point,
04:20I might as well fax a physical copy of the spreadsheet over to them, have them mark it up,
04:24and then fax it back. That's essentially what we're working with with Excel when talking about
04:28collaborating with others. The next thing that I hate about Excel, and this is something that I
04:32kind of learned to hate over time is the automation piece of Excel. Now with VBA and macros, you can
04:39automate things, but I've become accustomed to a certain level of automation with Python and other
04:44programming languages where I want to actually automate just about anything I could ever want.
04:49But with VBA macros, you can only do so much. And so when I'm working within Excel, I'm doing most
04:54of
04:55these things manually. I'm clicking and dragging and dropping, and I can't automate every single
04:59thing like I could in a different program language or another tool. And honestly, I try to automate as
05:04many things as I possibly can. So I've tried to automate a ton of things within Excel. I just
05:10haven't been super successful in it, if I'm being honest. The very last thing that I'm going to mention
05:14that I hate about Excel, and honestly, this list is probably a little bit longer, is that the data
05:18visualization is definitely lacking within Excel. There really are some good basic charts and graphs that you
05:24can use within Excel to get basic visualizations. But if you try to go beyond the basics, they're
05:28going to recommend that you use some 3D stacked pie chart, which makes absolutely no sense for what
05:34you're actually doing. So what ends up happening is I have to go to some other tool that has better
05:37data visualization. And then in the end, they want it in an Excel file. And so what do I have
05:42to do?
05:42Sometimes I have to print it out, or sometimes I have to integrate it into Excel. That's just a lot
05:47of
05:48extra work that I don't want to have to do. So Microsoft, if you are watching, I'd be more than
05:52happy to come
05:53and help you with the data visualization side of Excel free of charge. Well, maybe a small charge.
05:57Now, with all that being said, Excel is still a really great tool. There are just some things
06:02that just really get under my skin when using Excel, and I've been using it for many, many years.
06:07But Excel is a fantastic tool, and you still need to know it for data analysis. And I think
06:11as you get further along, that's why people start really not liking Excel, is they start using it at the
06:17beginning, it's great. But then they find all these different use cases, why it doesn't work.
06:23And everybody else in the business world, everyone else that they're working with,
06:27wants everything in Excel. And so since not everything is super native to Excel, you have
06:31to figure out little workarounds and little ways to get it into Excel, which gets super tiring and
06:37really frustrating. So Excel is kind of that one thing that does really well in a lot of areas,
06:42just doesn't Excel in every single area. And so you have all these specialty tools and all these
06:46different plugins that you have to do outside of Excel and then bring it back into Excel.
06:51And that's, I think the part that makes people the most frustrated.
06:54So thank you for listening to this venting session. I just needed to get it out there.
06:57I think it was kind of therapeutic for me to just talk about it. And hopefully some of you guys
07:02will
07:02agree with me in the comments because it would make me feel better. So thank you guys so much for
07:06watching. If you liked this video, be sure to like, and subscribe. I'll see you in the next video.
