Biggest turn-offs

So, for no reason other than it's Monday morning and the prospect of working seems unappealing, my countdown of the five things most likely to elicit an inward groan from me, followed swiftly by the decision to close a post here and leave the solution to somebody else.

5. "...pivot table" - dammit, I haven't spent 15 years learning Excel formula so that I could make things easy by putting them in a pivot table!

4. "When drawing a chart ..." - A chart?! Excel is an application for hard-core data heads, the kind of people who see the green text in The Matrix and think, "I wonder how you up the scroll speed". If you want to draw charts then you're some kind of middle-management wannabe and should stick to Powerpoint, or maybe MS Paint.

3. The master of a vague, whose entire first post is, "Hi. I'm new to the forum and I need to use Excel to change some data so that it works in a different format. Is this possible?" Yes. The answer is "yes". The answer is always "yes". It might be "yes, it's easy", or "yes, but it's a bit tricky" or "yes, but you'll need to sacrifice 10 years of your life, learn to think in assembler code, grow a beard and wave goodbye to your sanity", but the answer will be "yes". If I could just post "yes" then I would, but I can't, so next thread, please.

2. "The following code gives me an error". The code is 4-pages long. There is no attached workbook. No clue is given as to where the error is. Half of the code is select statements, most of the other half is recorded .sort or .replace methods, no variables are defined, comments are not in the Roman alphabet.

And, #1 ...

1. "Mac version of Excel"


Please feel free to add your own, should you also feel that Monday morning reality is too dull.