this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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It's not... Try to write a formula range which covers only lower half of the column which is typical setup in summing numbers( avoiding headers ), limits in columns and records, ever changing formats across versions... You asking for a disaster to happen which happens very often
You can literally label ranges to use them as variables in Excel formulae, not to mention Excel Tables has more operations and features than you'll ever need.
Unless you are working with an unfiltered, un-aggregated ledger dump straight out of your database (in which case you shouldn't be let anywhere near an office computer), it's rather hard to cross 1M+ rows and 16.4k columns in corporate finance.
The .xlsx format was introduced in 2007 (18 years ago) and hasn't changed since. Not to mention you can still use all kinds of plaintext formats whenever you want.
Anybody who used ANY library to process xslx knows MS keeps changing it :-) About ranges... can you give me the range for whole columns minus 6 first records and 9 last records?
Would you like this in excel formula, VBA, or python?
It can be done in all. You're only proving the other poster's point. Excel isn't necessarily the best option for tech literate people but given the tech illiteracy of many offices, it isn't surprising they use excel for stuff like this.
I highly doubt that, also, people in corporate finance do not use libraries to process excel files.
=OFFSET(first_cell, 7, COLUMNS(range_name), ROWS(range_name)-9-7)whererange_nameis the label given to the whole table andfirst_cellis its first cell.