goddamnbloodysonuvafrellingthing

[missroserose]

You know those fairy tales where the evil queen sets the virtuous maiden some impossibly tedious task, like collecting bushels of flax seed spread over a field, and she'll be put to death if she doesn't finish the task by sunrise, so she sits and cries until the king of the ants that she had conveniently saved earlier in the story comes along and gets his subjects to help her so that the task is finished by sunrise so that the evil queen can set her some other impossibly tedious task?

Yeah. I'm starting to feel kind of like that here at work. Several months ago BD put me in charge of doing a fairly tedious monthly task, which, while not impossible, was nonetheless kind of annoying. And it seems like every month hence he's added on some other aspect to make it even more tedious and complicated, culminating (so far) in this month's revision, which is going to make the entire thing take five times as long as it did before. Argh!

To be fair, I really shouldn't complain - after all, it's not a difficult task, just time-consuming and annoying and unfortunately rather necessary to running the company. And besides, I don't think I qualify as particularly virtuous or maidenly, and I'm pretty sure I haven't saved any anthills recently (not that ants could really help me with Excel spreadsheets). Though BD would probably look hilarious in an evil queen costume...

Comments

[decibel45.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you should look into parts of that that you can automate. There's a lot you can do with excel's macro language.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, BD said he was going to look into figuring out some shortcuts to make it all easier. Unfortunately, given his track record with "intend to do something" vs. "actually finding the time to do it", I may be doing all this by hand for some time. And unfortunately I don't really know enough about Excel to figure it out for myself. It doesn't help that numbers and formulas make my brain hurt...

[decibel45.livejournal.com]

It's pretty easy to figure Excel out... I suggest just start looking into simple stuff you could automate and build up from there. What kind of stuff are you doing?

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Long-distance billing. The bill includes all the calls for all the numbers for three different companies, and originally I just had to sort it by company, which didn't take too long. But then one company needed it sorted out by sub-groups within the company, which took much longer, and now they want it sorted out and totaled by extension as well as sub-group, plus we have to start billing for taxes and surcharges. So, as you might imagine, suddenly an hour-long task becomes an all-day task.

Incidentally, though, I took a break and put up some Christmas decorations, which helped me feel a bit better. =)

[decibel45.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a lot to ask of Excel.

Do you have Access? It could handle all of that pretty easily, though it would take more work to get it setup.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Not yet. I think that's the eventual idea (since the files originally come in Access format and BD has to break them out into Excel for me), but given how quickly things tend to happen inter-office, it may be a while. Maybe I'll make BD a workorder - seems to be the only way anything ever gets done. =D

[decibel45.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's just a matter of getting Access, you might try Open Office. They have something similar to Access, and its free.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I remember looking into that at one point; I think I just didn't have enough experience with any of it to make it work properly. To be honest, I don't even know that much about Excel; I have a vague idea of how it works, and then know exactly which buttons to press to make a certain result, but not much in between. (Though I seem to be learning more and more each month...)

[errant-variable.livejournal.com]

I second the Open Office idea. It's what's currently on my machine and with VERY few exceptions (specifically the Office 2007 and .mdi formats) it has 100% success with Office tools. I also think a database would be the best way to go about your billing as IIRC Excel isn't too smooth on the subgroups, but that's not something I have enough experience in yet to send you in a more specific direction. What will help: experience, preseverance, and getting a gel wristpad so you don't bloody your head banging it on the desk.