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datacarpentry / spreadsheets-socialsci

Data Organization in Spreadsheets for Social Scientists
http://datacarpentry.github.io/spreadsheets-socialsci/
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remove coloration and special formatting from report_data_c.xlsx #30

Closed ErinBecker closed 6 years ago

ErinBecker commented 6 years ago

Episode 02-reformatting includes an Excel spreadsheet which is intended to be an example of good formatting. However, it includes special formatting like colored celled and text coloration that should be removed.

PeterSmyth12 commented 6 years ago

The 'special' formatting is introduced automatically by Excel when the data is made into a table in step 5 of the process. There is no information content in the coloring, it aids readability. When you export the data, nothing is lost. Surely the point about not using colour is that it masks information that can be lost?

ErinBecker commented 6 years ago

Thanks for the clarification @PeterSmyth12! Yes, the point about not using color is that we don't want people using color to convey information. I'm working through the steps for reformatting the messy data table in this exercise on my version of Excel to see if the coloration is automatically introduced also on my machine. If so, then it would appear to be a cross-platform (Window/Mac) feature in Excel and we should consider keeping it. If not, then we may still want to consider removing the color as it won't be seen by all of the learners when they reformat the table. I'll update this issue with my findings!

ErinBecker commented 6 years ago

Closed in favor of solution proposed in #37.