Friday Fun with Spreadsheets 2022-10-07

by Debra · Published October 7, 2022 · Updated October 31, 2024

Happy Friday! It’s only 10 days until Spreadsheet Day! In the meantime, here’s a bit of Friday fun, featuring spreadsheets. And if you’re in Canada, like I am, Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Spreadsheet Art

There’s definitely an art to making great spreadsheets. But do you ever use spreadsheets to create art?

For example, I love this North Carolina lighthouse, made by Professor Elizabeth Albright, from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

now that @DukeEnvironment course registration is done, had a bit of time for this morning’s #spreadsheet #art. Cape Lookout #Lighthouse on the #crystalcoast of North Carolina. It’s the argyle one. @CapeLookoutNPS. #dataviz #DataScience #AcademicTwitter #AcademicMentalHealth pic.twitter.com/QCCZj7YHwq

— Elizabeth Albright (@enviro_prof) August 25, 2022

Coffee and Spreadsheets

If you usually drink coffee, or another hot beverage, while you work with spreadsheets, a shortcut mug might come in handy!

These shortcuts work in Excel, and most of them probably work in other spreadsheets too.

Just a girl working on a #spreadsheet with my coffee and my awesome shortcut mug that @SMoore_teach sent me! ☕️ pic.twitter.com/9ttKFV3aUK

— Bonnie Chelette (@BonnieChelette) September 28, 2022

Writer Jennifer “Jay” Palumbo has a spreadsheet mug too, and it’s definitely based on Excel. I’m sure that many Google Sheets people would agree though. Winking smile

Awwwwwww yeah. #excelspreadsheets #googledocs #spreadsheets #loveagoodspread pic.twitter.com/BB7IBrT5o8

— Jennifer “Jay” Palumbo (@jennjaypal) October 4, 2022

Spreadsheet Meme of the Week

Things don’t always go well in a spreadsheet, and you might run into problems sometimes, if you’re using pivot tables.

The pivot items don’t always sort the way you’d like them to, and some days there’s data missing, even though you know it’s in the source table.

This week’s spreadsheet meme is a tribute to days like that:

My day in 2 words. Pivot. Table.

Tip: Google Search can be your best friend on days like that, and there’s a page on my Contextures site that has ways to troubleshoot pivot table errors.