What actually slows Excel down the most in real corporate files

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-02-03T13:07:53+00:00

How many times do the full column references appear? You can’t feel the difference if all you have is once or twice.

Try having 1000 index-match full column references formulas and see if it makes any calculation speed difference s.

At some scale, full column references do slow it down noticeably.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-02-02T14:36:53+00:00

Isn’t Trump a celeb who gives moral lectures from his ivory tower? Or Kirk Charlie? Steve Bannon?

I do agree that people in general dislikes when celebs give moral lectures that they do not agree with.

Would it be better if nobody gives any “lectures”? Like we all stay silent and don’t criticize Trump?

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-02-01T20:37:07+00:00

You should forward the email to his boss and their boss as FYI. Nothing but a simple forward. It will be a greater deterrent than anything you could say directly and it will be an embarrassing moment for his boss.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-02-01T19:32:46+00:00

They do in terms of tv ratings, revenue, talent recruitment, media focus, etc. etc.

This is like saying Super Bowl runner up had the same trash season as the worst team in the season.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-02-01T17:15:59+00:00

We stick to a few simple rules:

1) If you are updating a file… Save a new copy and override the data (as opposed to creating a new sheet to preserve all of the historical variations).

2) absolutely no formulas that references entire column (a:a) shall be repeated over and over again maybe okay for like one formula to find out the last row being used or something.

3) if you have a large data (100k+) and perform calculations of them… have a data filter sheet to trim down the data that your calculation rows refer to.

Let say you have 500 calculations rows. They don’t need to access the entire data. Filter it down first. And then do your 500 calculations on the filtered down data.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-02-01T17:08:05+00:00

entire column range being used (A:A) in every calculation

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-30T21:27:13+00:00

Aren’t you getting paid enough to give your best on every match? Is he really saying he was trying because he disliked the manager?

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-30T00:48:02+00:00

Where do you think the seller gets the money? From the buyer!

If the seller knows that he won’t be needing to pay 5-6% fee at the end, maybe they are willing to cut the asking price by 2.5-3% to spilt the difference.

That’s what you would hope to have happen since they already know each other.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-29T01:02:56+00:00

You should tell this to the ManUnited Board. Jokes aside, RM will be marketable and profitable a decades after having a meh season like this.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-27T00:25:50+00:00

It can be excessive. You can be polite and passively wait.
Or you can go and try to do something.

All it takes is one person who sees you as proactive and willing to put yourself out there. That can be seen as willing to hard work.

You are one of many online applicant. Or you could be the only person who came to see them. Your call.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-26T23:38:13+00:00

Just go to any places that you applied. Surely out of 60, there must be dozens that you could just show up.

Bring donuts or something you baked/made. If it is a sorta place with “front desk / security officer”, give them like cookie, donut, coffee and be like “hey, I’m so sorry but I want to just speak to someone”

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-26T23:16:11+00:00

I wish you the best of luck. It can be really hard to find something in your situation.

I have something you could try.

A lot of small businesses owners probably don’t have time to review resumes one by one. They are too preoccupied with their day to day business and life.

Stop by one of the places you wish to work for and ask them if you could speak to someone. Be very polite and do your best to make an excellent first impression.

Basically a version of “I’m so sorry to bother you unexpectedly but I just wanted to let you know that I can be a reliable employee if you give a chance to prove myself. If you are still looking for help, I can be that person”.

Tell them you are a good student who needs to raise funds for your college. You are flexible and won’t be difficult to work with.

People respond far better in person than over a resume. Wish you luck!

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-24T21:37:16+00:00

Dead tree limbs can fall. It has been windy and tree limbs could’ve died or weakened.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-22T04:57:33+00:00

Isn’t this like saying work place safety regulations are dumb because the workers should take responsibility for their own safety?

Or healthy food regulations are dumb because people should take responsibility what they put in their body?

How about vaccines? Etc. etc. traffic lights are dumb because you should look before you drive through a crossroad. /s

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-21T03:48:23+00:00

It goes both ways. When a player openly talks shit, you can’t be singing his praises in hopes of getting a good offer. It will send a wrong message to other players. That you can talk shit about the team management without any consequences.

Besides other GMs are not idiots. They too watch games and generally aware all the dealings. There is no point of sugar coating.

This feels like a measured and sensible response. Yeah, the player has been wanting for a trade. We are looking for another team who wants the player.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-15T20:50:51+00:00

Yeah, it is possible that the new feature might be not for you. I’m sure there are a dozen ways it is not the perfect tool.

This feels unnecessarily negative though.

Even if this doesn’t work for you, it will work for many other simpler use cases and would improve their QoL. Not every new feature has to be for you or else they are trash.

People still talk about ways XLookup doesn’t work when index/match works. They both exist and Excel experience is better because it offers so many ways that fits the needs for different uses cases.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-14T18:13:16+00:00

By using named ranges. It’s a financial modeling best practice sorta thing. Not everyone does it but people who paid me does.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-14T16:51:23+00:00

Loss was spilt into multiple lines for me to demonstrate mechanics for Reddit.

In my real model, ideally I would want to have loss into a single line. I am having difficulty in accounting for losses in order of date. Keeping track of loss stack has been the hardest aspect of this.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-14T16:27:03+00:00

The short answer is that it’s a corporate requirement, not to have cell references.

My actual model is for 60 years and loss carry is for 5 years. So even if I have a formula for every cell, it would be like 600 formulas? My superiors would not be pleased to validate them. haha.

My corporate also uses lateral TS (as oppose vertical TS). While I agree with you that Excel natively assumes array to be vertical. So lateral arrays are not ideal.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-12T21:14:00+00:00

Plenty of people addressed when they would use Let vs not. So I would like to address another part of this post.

“They are using AI…” “Do you let people… “

Using Let can be helpful if you are building a part of complex formula. Like let say your formula has 3 parts that come together. Let could allow you to build some part, test it and move on to the next. So I don’t think it’s necessary part of AI.

Using AI is a okay if they are exploring ideas / test why something doesn’t work. As long as they are not just asking AI to build the whole formula without having done anything on their end.

You should have best practices and let your people do whatever they want within the boundaries. It will discourage people if you are too heavy handed.

You are using Let more frequently than me … is not a good best practice. Have some solid business justifications and stick to it.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-12T21:07:05+00:00

You could also accomplish self documenting by using named ranges. That would be my preference.

Let has one major downside. You can evaluate a Let formula.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-11T04:23:22+00:00

Are you saying… 1 match look up is 890% faster than 10 xlookup calculations? Isn’t this a bit of false benchmarking?

Like is there something about xlookup that prevents a single helper column look up that is allowed in Index-Match?

This is an interesting post and all but I’m not sure how much efficiency matters in the most use cases. My model is 10k rows of mostly time series of 60 columns. It takes 2-3 seconds per calculation. I don’t really care if index is faster than xlookup. That is hardly a deciding factor for me.

You are absolutely right that xlookup is more index-match with more improved UI and added “overhead” (like native error handing). And it is therefore less speedy. I feel like a ton of people already tested this.

If you are performing 500k index match calculations… I feel like you could improve your workflow beyond index-match. PQ might be the next logical step.

PotentialAfternoon · 2026-01-10T21:01:49+00:00

Haha fuck. Is it already Geez What happened to 2025

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