[Closed] Excel Spreadsheets

I don't know. Why do excel spreadsheets only have 256 columns?

Good question Nickc. I wish I'd thought of that.

working days in a year and a couple of extra columns for good measure

2^4, binary limitation.

Probably a hangover from when computers were crappy ans slow.

Excel is a bit rubbish anyway 🙂

[i]Excel is a bit rubbish anyway[/i]

wash your mouth out heathen!
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*Alt+Tab, strokes excel model, you shouldnt have to hear such things my precious, Alt+Tab*

that was a silly guess by the way

[i]2^4, binary limitation[/i]. I spotted that, but why should that limit the number of columns, unless it just historical.

[i]that was a silly guess by the way[/i]

That's all I was expecting really 🙂

doh, sorry mean to say 2^8.

the reason it has continued so long is because the cell adressing would have been heavily embedded in the software from eons ago and would have required amassive rewrite to unwind. WHich they have now done for Excel 2007.

I believe Excel is built on a pretty ancient code base, when for some reason they decided to make a cell reference fit into a 24 bit binary number. It also limits maximum rows to 65536.

Excel 2007 has upped the numbers to 65536 columns and 1048576 rows though. Powers of 2 again.

Joe

It all goes back all the way to the original VisiCalc app that started it all

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slight threadjack. Is there much call for Excel vba programmers?
Been enjoying myself for the last year and a half doing this but my contract is up soon so looking for work.

a contact of my brothers* was looking for some risk analyst Excel/VBA programmers in Cheltenham. If location suits I can pass on details.
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.* Geek family 🙂

thanks Stoner, I'm in east Kent so Cheltenham is a bit out of my reach (although I can certainly see the benefits of moving that way with all that mountain biking around and abouts!)