ARH and the horror of Microsoft Excel: What's wrong with this picture?

[The Damned]

Well, besides me using Microsoft Excel.

I didn't really want to make a thread for this, but between the search function not really turning anything up and Xifanie/Zodiac not being around to bug at present, I guess I'll have to.

So, Celdia was helping me finally understand the ARH last night (since I am an idiot) and we noticed, after much trying on my end, that for some reason Excel won't output the necessary data from I2. Where should be the longish string of As and 0s is just "Name?" when I try to copy it. Given that Celdia informed that the I2 more or less is the ARH, this is...problematic.

At present, I am using the (rather large, large enough to have eaten up what little memory I had on this computer when I finished downloading and then installing it last night) program OpenOffice. It outputs everything, but the table with restriction parameters if horrifically squished.

I wouldn't mind having two things open, but if I could just fix this "error"--changing macros and stuff has availed nothing--in Excel, then I could just have open.

(Ugh, I am an unnecessarily long-winded bastard.)


TL;DR: Panel I2 doesn't output what it should in my Microsoft Excel, though everything else appears to work with regards to the ARH. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Is there a forumula in I2?  That's the letter that sounds like "eye" and the number two, this font makes capital i look like 1.

If there is, does that formula use any HEX2DEC or any other conversion functions?  Because excel doesn't come with those functions, you have to download something.

[LastingDawn]

Tha

Well, besides me using Microsoft Excel.

I didn't really want to make a thread for this, but between the search function not really turning anything up and Xifanie/Zodiac not being around to bug at present, I guess I'll have to.

So, Celdia was helping me finally understand the ARH last night (since I am an idiot) and we noticed, after much trying on my end, that for some reason Excel won't output the necessary data from I2. Where should be the longish string of As and 0s is just "Name?" when I try to copy it. Given that Celdia informed that the I2 more or less is the ARH, this is...problematic.

At present, I am using the (rather large, large enough to have eaten up what little memory I had on this computer when I finished downloading and then installing it last night) program OpenOffice. It outputs everything, but the table with restriction parameters if horrifically squished.

I wouldn't mind having two things open, but if I could just fix this "error"--changing macros and stuff has availed nothing--in Excel, then I could just have open.

(Ugh, I am an unnecessarily long-winded bastard.)


TL;DR: Panel I2 doesn't output what it should in my Microsoft Excel, though everything else appears to work with regards to the ARH. Does anyone know how to fix this?

That is very strange. I never had a problem like that before... I don't know if this will be any help to you at all, but here's the formula that I2 is supposed to use.

=CONCATENATE(RIGHT($Table.$F$28;$Table.$F$31*8);$Table.$F$24;$Data.$GR$7;$F$27J4)

This is from ARH 1.1, I do recall there may have been a few bugs with the original, but I don't believe it was anything as major than that.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Forgot to ask - did you enable Macros?

[The Damned]

I believe I have. How would I be sure, though?

Is there a forumula in I2?  That's the letter that sounds like "eye" and the number two, this font makes capital i look like 1.

If there is, does that formula use any HEX2DEC or any other conversion functions?  Because excel doesn't come with those functions, you have to download something.

It's the same formula that LastingDawn posted. Celdia actually made me realize I was trying to use the original version before given that I had downloaded it a year ago. I'm using ARH v.1.1 now, though.

[LastingDawn]

I believe I have. How would I be sure, though?

It's the same formula that LastingDawn posted. Celdia actually made me realize I was trying to use the original version before given that I had downloaded it a year ago. I'm using ARH v.1.1 now, though.

I'm not sure how painful this would be for you, but does a fresh copy work? If it does you might want to use that.

[The Damned]

The copy of the ARH v.1.1 I'm using now is a fresh copy given I just downloaded it literally less than 24 hours ago.

Unless you mean a fresh copy of Microsoft Excel, in which that would...take a while given how slow this computer is of late.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

I believe I have. How would I be sure, though?

I don't know, I use Gnumeric or OpenOffice, at least until LibreOffice gets better.

Downloading/upgrading things in windows is painful.  If you're computer is less than 5 years old, OpenOffice might not be a bad idea.

[The Damned]

Pretty sure this dinosaur is older than that, but, yeah, Windows upgrading/downloading is...annoying to say the least.

Oh well. I guess it's two windows for me so I can see what the hell I'm actually doing in Open Office on the Data Table. Is there a way to make it not show up horribly squished at least? I'd take that over fixing Excel even if Excel takes up less space than Open Office.

[LastingDawn]

Pretty sure this dinosaur is older than that, but, yeah, Windows upgrading/downloading is...annoying to say the least.

Oh well. I guess it's two windows for me so I can see what the hell I'm actually doing in Open Office on the Data Table. Is there a way to make it not show up horribly squished at least? I'd take that over fixing Excel even if Excel takes up less space than Open Office.

My Excel recently became corrupted (along with a lot of my other Microsoft tools...) so I would also like to know if there's a way to not have OpenOffice look so poor on larger spreadsheets.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

...Do you have the Excel Required Toolpak on your Microsoft Excel, Damned?

I'm going to hazard a guess that your problem is that you lack the toolpak.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

The problem with OpenOffice is that it's incredibly slow, and routinely freezes up when editing large spreadsheets.  I don't know what you're talking about with squished spreadsheets; I use a netbook, that's why all my screencaps are so small.

OpenOffice is also becoming less open these days, which is why part of their development team created LibreOffice, which should replace it within a couple months.  OpenOffice is so fucking slow because they use a lot of Java.

[LastingDawn]

Ah? Would it be preferrable to downlord LibreOffice then? The slowness of OpenOffice is also a huge problem.

[The Damned]

Ah, I thought it was just this computer (and the literal lack of memory) that was making Open Office run so damn slowly last night. That's good (and bad) to know.

...Do you have the Excel Required Toolpak on your Microsoft Excel, Damned?

I'm going to hazard a guess that your problem is that you lack the toolpak.

Probably not. It doesn't sound familiar and is Excel is one of the few Microsoft Office things I actually use, so I think I would have noticed.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spreadsheet_software#Free.2Fopen_source_software

I can't recommend either OpenOffice (ever) or LibreOffice (yet) in good faith.  Maybe one of these will help you.

Gnumeric is your best bet; it has a windows binary, but you might have to install a bunch of other things to get it working, and it may lack some functionality.  It will be much faster than OpenOffice, and less buggy then Excel.

[LastingDawn]

Gnumeric appears to have the same problems as OpenOffice. The text is too scrunched to see and the loading takes forever, though to be fair that's only the First time you load something, once it's loaded and you switch to another page it seems much better. I'll take a look at the other options here.

[The Damned]

Hey, the toolpak kit thing worked for Excel. Thanks, Raven.

(Geez, I know even less about computers than I thought if it was already in Tool Add-Ins. Such a noob.)

I'll keep those options in mind, though. Thanks for that, Pickle Girl Fanboy.

Thanks for your help, you three.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Gnumeric appears to have the same problems as OpenOffice. The text is too scrunched to see and the loading takes forever, though to be fair that's only the First time you load something, once it's loaded and you switch to another page it seems much better. I'll take a look at the other options here.

You can fix that by highlighting the offending columns and Format->Columns->Auto-fit Width, in Gnumeric.  In OO.org Calc, i think it's the same, except Optimal Column Width instead of Auto-fit Width.

I have some problems with ARH and it's drop-down boxes partially covering up adjacent cells, but I can still see enough of them to tell what numbers are in them.  Even if I couldn't, I could always make those cells Align Left and fix that problem.

[LastingDawn]

Ah, I just went and downloaded another copy of Excel. And I have to say I stumbled across the Same Exact problem that The Damned had. Thankfully because of the information already here I was able to solve it without any grief!

Though thank you for all your help in trying to find an alternative solution.

[Celdia]

You can fix that by highlighting the offending columns and Format->Columns->Auto-fit Width, in Gnumeric.  In OO.org Calc, i think it's the same, except Optimal Column Width instead of Auto-fit Width.

I tried exactly this in OO a while ago and I figured OO just hated me or something because it seemed to just fucking ignore me. If I tried to set a specific width instead of using auto-fit, nothing lined up right anymore. I just use it squished. -_-