SOFTWARE Round 2: Excel vs. PDF

[PSMKay]

It's the orderly vs the chaotic in this matchup, as boxy Excel takes on the flexible Acrobat in what is likely to be a tight matchup.

Excel/Spreadsheet
Excel and Word are the Venus and Serena Williams of this tournament: great individually, better together. Word faced a tough game against the Web Browser's strong defensive line earlier in the week. If Excel takes this match it will have to face off against its sibling in the sweet sixteen. For now though, it must focus on taking out Acrobat.

Excel courts stage managers with its fondness for putting info in nice neat boxes. It backs up its aesthetics with math wizardry that makes it a go-to tool for time calculations. Will it be enough to hold its own against the PDF?

Acrobat/PDF Readers
Adobe Acrobat was long despised for its long load times and massive memory usage. That was then. Nowadays PDF has become the universal format for static document exchange, ensuring that resumes and production documents look the same on every computer that opens them. The Office suites' steps to making PDF generation easy has gone a long way towards spreading the popularity of PDF. Meanwhile, competing PDF readers with lightweight footprints such as Foxit Reader have forced Adobe's hand to slim down Acrobat Reader to fighting trim.

Stage managers, only one of these two excellent teams will continue to the next round. Will it be brother vs brother in the sweet sixteen, or will the two e-script powerhouses face off? It's time for you to decide.

Poll remains open through midnight at the end of December 7, EST.

[Maribeth]

This is a tough one- Excel has my vote but just by a hair. I remember the days before PDFs were widespread, and now that it's so easy to export a document as a PDF without another program is just fantastic.

[nick_tochelli]

I don't understand you whippersnappers and your love for specific word processing programs vs. universal things like WEB BROWSERS and PDFs!

*grumbles something about lawns and getting off them. turns around and shuffles back into house as the open robe catches the breeze*

[Maribeth]

Well, spreadsheets are pretty universal. A spreadsheet with formulas can save a lot of time/effort if used properly.

[nick_tochelli]

True, but how many times do we send out a workbook only to have someone complain they can't open it?

I realize I'm never winning this battle mind you but I find making pdfs invaluable.

[PSMKay]

PDF is definitely the underdog here. Even so, it's a testament to how strong it has become over the past few years that it's actually registering some hits against Excel in a stage management vote-off. This match isn't neck-in-neck like Drive/Skype, but it also isn't the rout I feared it might be at the outset.

[Michelle R. Wood]

@nick_tochelli: I hear you, totally. I rely heavily on PDFs and would hate to not be able to create them.

That being said, if we had to return to the dark days before PDF, there would still be ways to share that information with others; maybe not as well, but it would still be possible. The same can not be said of doing without Excel (or Calc, in my case, or Drive, or whatever your spreadsheet method of choice is). Tabular display and use of data is very old (predigial) because it works so well to display complex information in a succinct, coherent manner. Through in higher level functions like sorting and formulas, and it's really no contest in the "can't do without" department.

[babens]

I'm giving my vote to the PDF.  I remember the "olden" days before it was super easy to export documents in that form and the number of complaints of either not being able to open it, or having the format change drastically once it did get opened, or (and this really made my blood boil) people out and out changing and altering my documents to cover their own hides or set me up as the "bad" example when they were using my paperwork after the fact in a class they were teaching.

[lab320]

This one is really hard. I like making everything in excel and converting it to pdf because it's easier to access on other devices, but then again I can't edit anything on a pdf or convert it back to excel. Excel gets my vote today