It's worth noting that the described flow could've been fully automated from within the Excel itself, with just a few macros and formulas. I've created a spreadsheet doing very similar thing (grabbing the exchange rate from net and generating invoice) like a decade ago, so it's not even something new. The main issue people have with Excel is the same as with vim, majority of users just don't use it properly and know only the most basic functionality - which results in them doing a lot of repetitive things manually. I don't mind using tools like keikai, they're one approach to solve the problem, but perhaps companies could also try to send their employees on a proper Excel course first.
I've been able to learn vim because the web is full of high quality content that will teach it from the basics in a way that's compatible with my mindset.
I never had the same experience learning Excel, maybe the problem is my mindset. The only learning experience I enjoyed about excel is 'You suck at Excel' by Joel Spolsky.
Can someone recommend a good Excel learning path for someone in this situation?
The best way to learn Excel is to use it at work. I thought I was fantastic at Excel/VBA until I got my first finance role. Learned more in 3 months than I could have learned in 3 years on my own.
One secret I'll let you in on: most people use plugins like KuTools to do the heavy lifting. There are tons of industry-specific plugins. When you really can't find a plugin to do what you want, then, and only then, should you be writing macros and saving them to your xlsb.
But what if you're not able to use it at work? Then I recommend picking up pet projects and continually look for ways to improve. Just keep asking, "could this be easier?"
Whenever you get stuck on Excel issues, I recommend watching Excelisfun [0] who has thousands of hours of video content on every Excel feature you can think of. If you have difficulties with VBA, check out MSDN help docs.
P.S. Don't write a fuzzy text matching algo yourself. You will drive yourself crazy and Microsoft has one for free to download.
Yes, get a job in finance and learn off your colleagues. Sorry but that seems to be what most people I know who ate good at Excel did. In reality it is just like programming, practice solving real problems with a team of experienced people.
The described workflow can be entirely designed in a visual tool like EasyMorph* (https://easymorph.com) without any need for scripting at all. Plus the benefits like support for version control systems, auto-documentation, scheduling, etc.
How do you do version control with code embedded into spreadsheets? Am I not better off making code that generates a spreadsheet (or CSV or whatever formats I care about)?
It's possible to export the code to text files. MZ-Tools [1] can do it, or use VBA directly [2]. Xtrail [3] is popular in Finance companies but I haven't used it personally
It’s been a long time since I looked into it but I remember a version of Office like 20 years ago that integrated with version control. I wonder if that’s still a thing.
