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Microsoft to Silently Remove the CONCATENATE Function from Excel, Offers Paid Alternative: CONCAT

posted by martyb on Monday November 26 2018, @02:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the putting-it-all-together dept.

deimios writes:

If you've ever tried to use the CONCATENATE function in Microsoft Excel to merge the values in a range of cells, you know it doesn't work unless you add each cell to the function, one by one.

You might have noticed the following message in the support article for CONCATENATE:

Important: In Excel 2016, Excel Mobile, and Excel Online, this function has been replaced with the CONCAT function. Although the CONCATENATE function is still available for backward compatibility, you should consider using CONCAT from now on. This is because CONCATENATE may not be available in future versions of Excel.

Meet the alternatives: CONCAT and TEXTJOIN

for CONCAT and TEXTJOIN:

Note: This feature is not available in Excel 2016 unless you have an Office 365 subscription. If you are an Office 365 subscriber, make sure you have the latest version of Office.

While it is admirable that Microsoft is finally fixing some of the idiosyncrasies of its software, I fear the future will bring a level of fragmentation unseen since the office 2003 to 2007 switch.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by zocalo on Monday November 26 2018, @04:21PM (5 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Monday November 26 2018, @04:21PM (#766476)
    Oh, yeah, they're definitely copying the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC playbook here. Next up they'll be adding absolutely essential features that any right-thinking person would expect to just work out of the box to the subscription only feature list, but won't realise they are missing until after they install the software. It's an excellent strategy at first, but long term...? Well, my employer has about 30k employees all told, and every single one of them no longer has Acrobat installed on their work PCs, including those who used to have Acrobat Pro, having been migrated across to a much more capable open source package that now let's everyone create and edit PDFs if/when they need to, and now that Corporate IT has started down the F/OSS road there are a steadily growing number of other F/OSS packages available through our software portal and supplanting paid-for tools.

    Keep it up, Microsoft, and would you like to buy some more rope? It's fully open source, including the instructions for tying it into a noose.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @04:28PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @04:28PM (#766478)

    What are they using to edit PDFs?

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday November 26 2018, @04:58PM (2 children)

      by zocalo (302) on Monday November 26 2018, @04:58PM (#766491)
      PDFedit [pdfedit.cz] is the default PDF editor that is pre-installed on our Windows builds, but there are some other options available for those that need features it doesn't support yet or just don't like the interface, including PDFSam (also F/OSS) and a couple of other freeware/commercial options as well including CutePDF and FoxIt (which also provides the default PDF reader). Personally I switched to CutePDF as I was already familiar with it from a previous employer.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @06:32PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @06:32PM (#766533)

        Thanks. I'm always on the lookout to add good open source programs to my list of alternatives.

      • (Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday November 26 2018, @06:40PM

        by NewNic (6420) on Monday November 26 2018, @06:40PM (#766539) Journal

        PDFedit [pdfedit.cz] is the default PDF editor that is pre-installed on our Windows builds,

        Does it work with the FBAR PDF document? [treas.gov]

        Before you say, just use the online tool ... the online tool is a one-shot affair. You can't start creating it, save it, then come back after a while. Instead, you have to sit down with all your data and complete it all in one session.

        --
        lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @04:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 26 2018, @04:54PM (#766487)

    Like the other AC said...

    Why did you take the time to go on a rant about Acrobat and then tout some magical open source product only to leave the name of it out? I call bullshit!