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------- Additional comments from kke...@openoffice.org Wed Jun 3 11:27:21 +0000 2009 ------- Karlis, I think in this bug report we have seven years worth of evidence that this problem is *extremely* common even if Andrew personally may not have come across it. Which makes me wonder why he even cares about it one way or the other? I actually found the bug exactly the same way you did: a vendor sent me a proposal that looked like the cheapest. In my case, it wasn't for my own business but for a customer - which means that I could have gotten sued over it, and it could have put out of business. I'm not even sure if an E&O insurance would cover such matters. Fortunately, I caught it before placing the order. This vendor was a large company, and I'm sure they are sending out dozens of these spreadsheets every day. You are absolutely right. Retraining users is an absurd suggestion. And it wouldn't even help. That horse has left the barn long ago. You know the old joke about how God could create the world in seven days? He didn't have to worry about an installed base. Most likely, they have a sales team of maybe 20 people. Each of them probably keeps a copy of each spreadsheet sent out, and when a new prospect calls, pulls up one of the old spreadsheets, changes the numbers, and resaves it. Maybe they are using SharePoint or something like it to manage the large number of spreadsheets - who knows. He certainly will NOT go back and spend hours double-checking every single cell of a 5-page spreadsheet with 3000 rows and 30 columns - even less so when he sees with his own eyes that the total is correct. And since he can use any of thousands of previous versions of this spreadsheet as a starting point, cleaning up all the places where this "error" (which isn't an error at all from Excel's perspective) lurks is just plain a ridiculous proposal. Add to that the problem of personnel turnover. In many companies, sales people last maybe six months. Do you really seriously propose that each of these people be trained in such all such subtle issues that doesn't even affect the software that they and 99% of the world is using? On the first day on the job? With that kind of turnover, training is going to be 2 hours of "here is the phone, here is the price list, and for the proposals just ask John over there to send you a copy of the spreadsheet he did. Now get to work, and I want you to make 20 sales in your first week!" And training for long-term employees? Maybe after a year on the job they'll be sent to a one-week Excel class taught by a MOUS (Microsoft Office User Specialist). Most likely somebody who has never heard of OO. Training people? Come on, get real. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated notification from Issue Tracker. Please log onto the website and enter your comments. http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html#notification --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: issues-unsubscr...@sc.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: issues-h...@sc.openoffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: allbugs-unsubscr...@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: allbugs-h...@openoffice.org
