@Steve
No, they were a favorite for their purpose when Lotus 123 was ruling the roost.
Which wasn't a repository for a contract document.
Try comprehension. English is working, need to step up to the next level.
Lehman Excel snafu could cost Barclays dear
A formatting fubar involving an Excel spreadsheet has left Barclays Capital with contracts involving collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers than it never meant to acquire. Working to a tight deadline, a junior law associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP converted an Excel file into a PDF format document. The doc was …
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@Mark
"I talked about who got into the heads of PHB's that EVERYTHING could be solved with Excel. "
And you're still wrong, spreadsheets were a PHB favourite before Excel was even published, and as far as the PC using PHBs are concerned, you can point the finger firmly at Kapor's Lotus Development which spent the bulk of it's $3 Million venture capital specifically on marketing into corporations before Excel even existed as a product.
Not that it would have mattered much, PHBs wanted spreadsheets, they were the killer app for business computing.
PHBs have loved spreadsheets since there have been spreadsheets to love.
WTF
Spreadsheets run most businesses. Any of the moronic posts "decrying this ghastly situation" are clearly written by people trapped in poverty and confusion. The core of this sad story is that the morons who control all the stacks of wonga handed over to them by d'workers consider it all to be a bit of a laugh and not really worth taking seriously. A clerical error leading to huge losses is something which should never ever happen.
Anyone working in retail or stock control knows the checks and balances built into the systems to make sure nothing goes missing. Yet when dealing with vast wealth some distressed chinless wonder can hoik huge chunks of money into the ether without batting an eyelid. Where's the iso 9001 procedure manual for these saps? I suppose the Boris Johnsons of this world should be put to work somewhere, just keep them away from real people's savings.
tempest / teapot
This is minor clerical error. Easily fixed by the court. The hyperbole here is fascinating. Its incredible how people with no actual knowledge of the situation or understanding if even the basic concepts of what happened, nonetheless feel the need to pontificate wildly.
No one is losing money or a job over this.
@Seán
The spreadsheets aren't used for DOCUMENTING legal decisions.
re: tempest / teapot
Not if Lehman or whoever want to offload the dead albatross on Barclays.
More than just hidden rows
Take the time to read the actual court submission (a pdf file no less!). It is not just the hidden rows. There was once a column called "Critical?" and each row had a "Y" or "N" in it.
They are claiming they don't want any of the things that were marked "N" in that column. Problem is, someone deleted that column and then had no idea which ones were "Y" or "N".
Sounds like a lawyer, not IT, error to me.
Yet another reason to hate Excel, but...
If you want a thing done properly, DO IT YOURSELF. Those rows shouldn't even have been IN the damn document if it's going outside your direct control.
Paris: spread, sheets. Enough said.
PS @ Mark and Reg Admin: I vote for the Hoff as "Male Paris".
An example of idiotic use of a spreadsheet
I have just been given an attachment which is a simple list of a few accounts I need to check.
It has been sent to me as an xls spreadsheet file.
Why?
Because "It's Excel. It can do ANYTHING!!!".
Bah.
Stupid fuckers.
So now, rather than just read the info, I've got to open up an expensive package that isn't all that quick and cut and paste the content into a text file so I can automate the search.
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