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Comment by aarondia | Hacker News Reader

Lack of interoperability is an interesting angle, but not one that I've ran into quite as much. I've usually gotten around that by converting to a csv file in the case of data, or screenshotting graphs, etc.

Would love to hear a bit more about your workflows where you're trying to process an .xlsx file in another system. I'd imagine it would be a nightmare, but haven't ran into it myself :)

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CSV files is one of the main problems with excel. Auto-guessing formats is the bane of many casual importers. And the warnings about tsv or csv when you open is tantamount to dark pattern. I can accept it once, but let me disable the pop up. Do Not auto save to xls or xlsx.

I don’t see that as a dark pattern because it’s honest - I will often open up a CSV and then turn on filters, sort the data, maybe highlight a few rows. The warning about losing that when trying to save as a csv is an honest warning. The same as opening a jpg in Photoshop or Gimp, adding layers and trying to save it back out - you’ll also get a warning that you’re about to lose work by saving to a simple file format.

Do it once, provide a "Don't remind me again" check box and save that for eternity.

The dark pattern is in repeatedly nagging me about this fact.

How is that a “dark pattern?” There’s no deception involved. You’re calling things “dark patterns,” but I think you think dark patterns are just UX you find annoying.

I call it a dark pattern because it indirectly discourages the use of interoperability in file formats.

The suggestion is 'use xlsx or suffer this annoying pop up'.

It's an easy fix. Have an option to disable it.

The other dark pattern, since we are chatting about them, is that you cant disable auto formatting. Excel will try to guess at your data, forcing you to jump through hoops to prevent it. The subtle suggestion is 'just use xlsx and this problem goes away' when in fact, they could offer an option to disable autoformating.

CSV is not interoperable as you lose the formulas.

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