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It was caused by some data files reporting positive test results exceeding the maximum file size

Also being reported in various local news items like that in the other discussion linked.

When I read that, I wondered what clowns built it. Now to hear that it was done in Excel I am shocked. I mean, Excel has its place, but in an operational system in which lives may depend?

16,384 column limit, even in the newer versions according to Microsoft! Mind you, for when things get really bad, it does support "Colors in a workbook: 16 million colors".

Maximum file sizes are a curse.

It's very odd though, as the numbers aren't high enough to hit any common thresholds, right?

Anyone have any thoughts on what could have gone wrong here?

It was the maximum number of columns in Excel ....

That somehow makes it even worse

Columns or rows?

Columns, they were using a column per case instead of a row per case.

Is that definitive?

Nope! Actually going off better info now it looks like they WERE using rows, but it was in the old .xls format instead of .xlsx which limits to 2^16 rows

https://twitter.com/standupmaths/status/1313149987707072512?...

Columns.

Row limit is over 1 million.

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