Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Spreadsheets
Raised as a usability problem by 32 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 33 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Columns, headers and frozen rows must be adjusted manually every timeUnreviewed
20112026- Manually resizing rows, columns and styling cells becomes a tedious, messy burden2024-06-14
- Constantly has to resize columns, style headers and freeze rows manually2019-11-22
- Resizing columns is laggy and the interface breaks when zooming2012-08-01
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 34 complaints
- Non-programmers get confused by references and date logic, producing broken spreadsheets2026-09-05
- Data split across sheets causes double counting and missed entries, and users struggle with closing entries across years2026-08-13
- Hidden cell logic is hard to read and auto-formatting silently alters data2026-02-08
- Spreadsheets are either too complicated to use properly or not capable enough for problems2026-01-07
- Unclear which input stays fixed when an output is changed2025-12-13
- Spreadsheets have bad input experience on phones for logging expenses2025-10-07
- Spreadsheets make it easy to mess up data that others then import and process2025-10-01
- Manually resizing rows, columns and styling cells becomes a tedious, messy burden2024-06-14
- Long formulas are unreadable in show-formulas mode; only the first few characters fit2024-03-06
- Every cell being editable by default makes spreadsheets error-prone and poor for most tasks2023-11-26
- Spreadsheets are a horrible user experience for technical users2023-04-05
- Spreadsheets are hard to use on phones; macros stop working and the layout doesn't fit small screens2022-11-15
- People cram comma-separated values or hierarchies into spreadsheet cells, breaking the tabular structure2022-05-04
- Spreadsheet interfaces become unusable for large-scale work, and people realise it too late2022-04-29
- Switching between app windows to grab data for each paste wastes lots of time2022-01-05
- Spreadsheet expense tracking became a UX monstrosity as it grew2021-04-28
- Applying a computation to all rows requires a huge mess of ARRAYFORMULAs2021-01-29
- Easy to make accidental edits to transactions without noticing2021-01-12
- Hard to trace which cross-sheet formulas change a cell, with no breakpoints2020-06-25
- Constantly has to resize columns, style headers and freeze rows manually2019-11-22
- Sheets get emailed around in many versions, so people can't tell which copy is current and errors creep in2019-07-12
- Users make too many mistakes copying and pasting data into spreadsheets2017-11-03
- Changing column width in one section also changes it in an unrelated section below2017-06-23
- Spreadsheets hide control flow in a second layer, making large tables hard to grasp and normalize2016-11-13
- Spreadsheets feel clunky to navigate for a vim or emacs user2016-11-13
- Data duplicated across many emailed spreadsheets gets out of sync and must be manually reconciled2016-07-24
- Spreadsheets are described as user-hostile, with no specific problem named2016-07-19
- Tutorials for GUI tasks require describing exact clicks, keys and sequences, which is tiring and hard to troubleshoot2015-05-21
- People spend hours copying numbers and joining data by hand in spreadsheets2015-01-02
- Error-prone manual manipulation and no visibility into what processing is occurring2014-05-27
- Guided demo stops reacting, overlays force hunting for next step, design mode hard to re-enter2012-12-10
- Resizing columns is laggy and the interface breaks when zooming2012-08-01
- Spreadsheets hide calculations in individual cells, making large files hard to inspect, verify and reuse2012-07-31
- Data spread everywhere makes spreadsheets distracting and hard to navigate2011-05-13