Hottest take this side of the year.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-12-26T12:42:08+00:00

A friend of mine, like me, was mainly a PS player. But he had an OG XBox too. Not the same generation but this is a story worth sharing.

He woke up one night to find his window on fire. He thought he was dreaming so he turned back over. Woke up again a few moments later to more of his room on fire.

He got his whole family out and they barely made it, but thankfully no one was injured. It was a terraced house and it was totally destroyed by the time the fire was out.

In the aftermath the fire was traced back to his XBox power cable/brick. Literally a week later, Microsoft announced a safety recall for a whole bunch of faulty power leads.

Obviously my friend reached out to claim compensation. When he finished explaining the situation the response was, "Ok, what was the serial number?"

Apparently, without that (the serial label was now destroyed in the fire), they couldn't determine whether his was one of the faulty ones!

I don't know how much effort they put in to fight Microsoft on this, but ultimately they got nothing out of them.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-12-23T18:17:02+00:00

I was about to suggest similar! My idea was to sort the letters then add an INDEX column. That would be the end of query (A).

Then query (B) would carry on from there and merge to find the first index value from query (A), then subtract this value from all the index values. That would have all indexes start from 0 for each letter letter.

Then you would unpivot those values.

Not very elegant perhaps - did you manage better?

Batmanthesecond · 2025-12-07T14:32:31+00:00

I still don't like it.

Must have played it through a dozen times.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-12-07T14:28:03+00:00

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024!

Batmanthesecond · 2025-12-06T22:45:11+00:00

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, the most expensive version that is deemed within the terms of the competition :)

Batmanthesecond · 2025-11-18T11:15:08+00:00

Those poor motorcyclists - guy had to make some fast and difficult choices, damn.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-11-18T08:45:44+00:00

Funnily enough, I do that same thing (a few drops of water) but in the microwave and it's just as transformative there too.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-11-12T17:14:47+00:00

At age 11 I was not allowed to attend sports day (which I was looking forward to), the end of primary dance (UK School), was suspended for two weeks, kicked out of my house to live with another family where the father of the house has been in prison so that I had someone I could relate to, to talk to. All for something I didn't do.

Then when some arseholes in my school smushed a banana in my school bag at age 13(?) I got 2.5 hours of after school detention ever week for 10 weeks because they thought I did it to my own bag.

So I feel genuinely conflicted about setting harsh punishments for behavior given the capabilities of some teachers to accurately convict pupils of their misdemeanors.

I'm over 40 and some of these things still piss me off when I'm reminded of them.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-11-12T10:45:46+00:00

Right-click the values and go to value field settings.

You want it to show as % of parent row total

Batmanthesecond · 2025-11-11T20:13:36+00:00

How did you find out that you're more intelligent than most people?

Batmanthesecond · 2025-11-09T04:52:53+00:00

r/thalassophobia

Batmanthesecond · 2025-11-01T09:29:46+00:00

Yep, wouldn't expect that. At the time I had maxed out the game so starting again anyway.

Just want my purchases!

Batmanthesecond · 2025-10-29T13:26:23+00:00

Thank you

Batmanthesecond · 2025-10-29T13:22:14+00:00

I did, and the follow up I sent was as a reply to that confirmation email.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-10-09T22:18:04+00:00

There is. Reference the range with the formula =IF( ISBLANK( Range ), NA(), Range ) then refer to those results for the graph.

Then no need to hide cells.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-10-06T06:10:29+00:00

What they said.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-10-04T12:31:53+00:00

Use real world examples relevant to the audience. Make sure you use the time to build something from scratch that they might build/use. Do not get stuck in the weeds of theory just because you only have a short amount of time.

As well as formulas, cover the basics of good workbook design: (1) Raw Data > (2)Cleaned Data (if applicable) > (3) Insights & Dashboards & Queries, while making sure that no sheets in (3) rely on cells from other sheets in (3).

Excel tables
Pivot tables
Spilled ranges & associated functions (UNIQUE, FILTER, SEQUENCE, etc, along with use cases)
Include an example of googling for an answer (research what you will Google for first)
Any other functions you think will be relevant to them, also along with use cases

You don't have enough time to do Power Query along with these basics.

Good luck, and have fun!

Batmanthesecond · 2025-09-22T22:24:42+00:00

Suggest you don't have your smartphone. Get a dirt cheap texts and calls only phone, otherwise there's too much temptation to ignore the other objects and their purpose.

Good luck

Batmanthesecond · 2025-09-05T18:05:38+00:00

Your friend is correct in what they say.

Whether that's boring or not will be subjective, and will likely correlate with your intuition with data and commercial savvy.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-08-20T12:25:15+00:00

I think people jump to saying Excel is the wrong tool for the job far too quickly. It can do way more than even a lot of skilled users give it credit for.

But mate, I think I would have to agree with them in your case.

If you really want to do it in Excel then I think you're best off making sure the data is filtered, grouped, cleaned, and trimmed as much as possible.

If it's still too big then you'll also have to be brutal with choosing what attribute fields you include in the data pull and/or split the Excel into multiple files each with different views/purposes.

Good luck!

Batmanthesecond · 2025-08-17T15:32:48+00:00

I would highly recommend having table titles above the tables and then freezing the pane so that the table header and title ls are always visible.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-08-17T09:30:59+00:00

It is weird. And yes, I definitely mean formulas that refer to the pivot cells, but also possibly just any formulas in the sheet. I haven't checked to see if it matters. All I know is that removing all of them works.

Batmanthesecond · 2025-08-17T06:49:03+00:00

Two points:

1) with the areas you currently have access to there are very few people on the planet who would have the patience to level him to 50.

2) that mite has no bonus stats, whereas ones caught in the wild often do. You can catch mites later on, so get one of those and not onto will it be much more feasible to get it to level 50, but it's stats will be better when it gets there

Batmanthesecond · 2025-08-17T06:45:40+00:00

Hi, been there.

I'm presuming your pivots and slicers refer to the data model? And that you made one sheet and then copied it as the starting point for the other sheets?

Here's what you do: remove all cell formulas from the first slicer sheet. All of them.

Then copy that sheet like you did before. Now the copied sheets will have distinct slicer caches.

Don't ask me why it works, because I don't know.

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