Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

This should have either been a Word template that used mail merge to insert the data into fields or an Access form.

  Checklist:
   #1 Are you doing calculations?
    Yes: Use a spreadsheet
    No: Use another tool

View on HN

Yeah. People usually forget that Word also supports tables. In my experience people think, I need tables therefore it’s Excel.

Tbf trying to position things in Word is enraging. I get the appeal of having an explicit grid.

This is another thing Apple does right. Pages allows you to turn off the inline text and use only absolutely positioned non-floating text boxes. In this mode It’s more similar to desktop publishing tools than word processing tools.

Really? That’s awesome! I’ve never bothered to use it, because GSuite is right there, but I will definitely keep that in mind.

Access gives you an explicit grid in its report designer.

Excel is already a solid grid without a separate report designer being necessary.

Except the OP had to write VBA code to link it to a database. That is almost guaranteed to be a brittle solution with hardcoded cell IDs.

I mean nothing should be an Access form, ever. :)

After learning Access in university I agree. Just toss it into the ocean...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com