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Congrats Shrivallabha for 1000 Post

Shrivallabha,

Congratulations on reaching this Milestone

Many thanx for your efforts over the past 2 and a half years
 
Thank you all. You all are very kind. It has been great experience at Chandoo.org forums.

This virtual world is full of intelligent people who are willing to share their knowledge and forums are great places to learn things quickly.

Lots of new things to learn everyday. While learning, I realized that I could share the gained experience / knowledge. So I have been trying to do that in whatever capacity I could. I do realize that I won't be as prolific as some of the guys here are. You do :awesome: job.

Thank you once again :)
 
Many thanks sgm, Sachin and Colin.

I still remember time when I started using Excel more regularly in 2007. My colleague and me would stumble several times on VLOOKUP and just could not figure out why VLOOKUP returned #N/A when we copied formula down :)

There was one incident which made me dig into this application little more than I probably would have.

We were dealing with a large Oil and Gas project. Such projects use sophisticated material management software. The software used in the project generated error reports (for the data sent and processed) in text format. The material guy sat somewhere in Europe and used to send CAD leader the error reports. CAD leader, oblivious as to what to do with them, kept saving them in a folder.

Our project leader was a Japanese guy and one day he probably received some fiery sermon from the material guy. The project lead was livid and came storming down to CAD lead. They discussed something and worked out plan. I was given the activity.

The plan was pretty simple. Open text files one by one. There would be maximum of 100 lines of summary data (excluding standard header and footers that the software spewed). Ignore all with remark 'OK'. Select the ones with error number and then solve the issue in CAD software. Finish files one by one.

I opened the oldest file and started looking into it. After couple of files I started feeling skeptical about the action plan. So I decided to change the strategy little bit.

I opened new file and copied and pasted data in excel. Then did text to columns. Then opened next file and pasted data and I was surprised a bit. Excel did text to columns on its own. Boy, I was pleased with this discovery. Now the process was pretty simple. Open File >> Copy to Excel >> Close File. But the project leader was getting angry as there was no progress after first 2/3 files. He asked me if I had made any progress and I had none as per his action plan. But I continued as I thought I was going in right(?) direction.

After 3/4 grueling hours my data was in Excel. After few up and down scrolls, it became evident that the latest version of any item would need to be addressed. e.g. P1001A would have several revisions A1,B1,C1,C2 etc. out of these C2 was the one which if it had error would need resolution.

I sorted the data but finding last revision was OK or not, by using some formula was completely beyond me then. My CAD lead and me had same level of knowledge in Excel which was beginner level. But what we knew was the project lead did many things in Excel. So I decided to ask him for solution.

When I approached project lead he was still fuming. I showed him data and explained what I wanted. He probably liked my idea but he said
"Do you understand that you are reversing the roles? You are asking your lead to do your task? You shouldn't do this."
I said "I know but then I also know that right now you are the only one who I know can do it"

He wrote one IF formula which he shuffled and tested couple of times. Once it looked OK then he gave it to me. We applied Autofilter and he was really pleased with what he saw. We knew exactly how many items we had to deal with and we could update the status progressively as it was Excel and we were free to add as many column as we needed.

However, his words were big lesson. Of all things, I knew him as self taught and very respectable man. So I thought I'd try to improve my knowledge to be like him in some way. I tried to learn things as they came my way.

Few years later I stumbled on forums. First one was VBAX. Since then I have seen many greats in this virtual world and have learned many things (not just excel) from them.

I think everyone has a story to share. This is mine, what is yours?
 
Thank you Luke.

I am little curious about the stats you posted. Somendra's posts per day is higher than Narayan's and yet in the last column Posts per year his rate is less. How come?

If Somendra and Narayan continue @thestatdayrate then they will have the same number of posts on:13th April 2042 :)
 
Since Somendra has been with us less than a year, it was causing an error in my initial # of posts / # of years. So, his rate is constantly growing as he posts this year. Formula was something like:
=IF(# of years = 0, # of posts, # of posts / # of years)

By not using decimals in the year, there's some slight oddities based on "partial years". But since you raise a valid point, here's same table, with last column using
=# of post / Days since joined * 365
(yes, not perfect for leap years, but close enough :p)
upload_2014-8-14_14-51-11.png
Now the numbers seem to line up better.
 
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