Today at work my team rolled our eyes at the latest uttering of “This is a living, breathing document.” I then joked that maybe we could give the spreadsheet some warts and some hair. That got me thinking - are there skins/mods for Excel that are cartoony and ridiculous? A cursory web search only turns up things that look “professional”.
Have y’all seen that nasty skin banana? Doesn’t this world have that, but in Excel? I’d like to see each cell have not-so-straight lines, some cells with little bumps/warts here and there, and little gross hairs in the corners. Bonus points if they pulsate. A pivot table could maybe have an appearance like it’s protruding out of the sheet, like a cartoon character who swallowed a safe and you can see the big square on their belly. Filtered rows could look like old skin wrinkles. “Excel illustrated by the one(s) responsible for Ren and Stimpy,” I guess.
And that’s just one gross hypothetical version. How about themes like Lisa Frank, or the menu from a Final Fantasy game. Think about the worlds in Super Mario Bros 3. Couldn’t we have spreadsheets that are themed like a desert, an ice world, or a jungle.
I’m running out of ideas but hopefully you get the picture.
DO THESE EXIST?
everything you suggest would be counter productive and detract from the functionality of excel… and form over function is how you create a living hellscape.
Dealing with an Excel spreadsheet is already a living hell, what’s a little extra pain and suffering going to do?
I submit that a properly laid out and simple excel spreadsheet is as beautiful as it is rare.
It’s dealing with other people’s spreadsheets because they don’t even know you can have multiple sheets to keep things organized, and they just throw everything onto the same sheet that is the living hell. That… and management that thinks imposing this kind of whimsy is a good idea…
A good excel sheet is a thing of beauty. I made one for my family’s finances which takes everything into account. Automatically calculates net from gross salary, child benefits based on number of kids, the percentage we both have to transfer to our joint account every month, etc. It gives us so much clarity about our finances.
I have a not so pretty sheet on Google Sheets I use for finances and while I agree, spreadsheets are generally not amazing. When they are, they certainly are.
Eh. These are Excel spreadsheets. Nothing in them matters in the grand scheme of things. And if you can regain a little humanity by humanizing your Excel in whimsical ways, I say more power to OP.
That said, it might be good to avoid letting the boss see it.
ya wanna recover your humanity?
Watch some cat videos. or go take a quick walk outside for some fresh air. Maybe, even, take a vacation.
your coworkers will thank you.
I mean, I’m not advocating for foisting anything on OP’s coworkers without everyone being on board with it. OP’s talking about mods for the copy of Excel on his own machine (or rather more likely the machine his employer
letsmakes OP use), not ways of fucking up a file (that would be shared between coworkers) right?Even if it’s a shared file, I can see whimsical tweaks (a haiku or a subtle Rick Roll that doesn’t interfere with my job or anything, maybe) that would be appropriate, but I’d agree I wouldn’t want coworkers skin-banana-ing spreadsheets I have to work with.
If you have columns and rows that aren’t straight, for example, that could lead OP creating/building/entering data in odd ways that their colleagues will then have to deal with. If some cells become unusable because of these “warts” randomly across the page… then anything the OP does to work around it will have to be worked around by anyone else not using their theme.
It’s difficult to imagine anywhere that the spreadsheet won’t be shared with at least one other person.
More like function over table