Not Excel-ing At Basic Computer Functions

We recently had an employee transfer from our least technically-apt department to a slightly more technically-apt department. This always results in an annoying few days for me because our managers firmly believe that the “T” in “IT” stands for “Trainer”; they give their new hires a super broad overview of what to do, and when they can’t figure it out, the managers tell them to put in a help desk ticket so I can teach them the basic computer functionality they should have already known before being considered for employment… but I digress.

Almost immediately, I get a ticket from [New User] that he can’t open a spreadsheet. I go through the basics, i.e., are there any error messages, do you have permission, is the file locked, is Excel not responding, yadda, yadda, yadda. Nope, the user just clicks the file, waits a few minutes, and nothing ever happens.

I remote into the user’s computer and have them show me what’s going on. I see the user open file explorer and browse to the directory, I see the mouse move over to a spreadsheet, I see the file highlight when clicked, and then… nothing. I put a blank Excel file into that directory and tell the user to open it. But it’s the same thing: nothing happens. I have them copy the file to their desktop and try to open it, but still nothing. I have the user open a Word document in that directory, and it works.

Okay, now I’m intrigued. I have the user launch Excel from the taskbar, go to File and Open, and open the spreadsheet. That works. Now I’m befuddled.

I open the file on my computer to make sure it’s not corrupt in some weird way that would only affect how it’s opened. Hey, stranger things have happened. I check the user’s permissions — file, directory, and account — even though I don’t think that is the case since the file does actually open inside of Excel. I run all sorts of checker tools and repair processes, all to no avail. I restore a previous version of the file from backup, but nothing.

I tell the user to go to lunch, and meanwhile, I will uninstall and reinstall Office from scratch. The user leaves and I hop on their computer. For s***s and giggles, I give one last attempt to open this spreadsheet before I uninstall Office… and it works immediately. I’m dismayed, discouraged, and confused, but who am I to question when things randomly decide to work properly? It still hasn’t occurred to me that I’ve missed something vital. I notify [New User] that the problem is solved.

A little while later, I get a response that it’s not fixed; [New User] still can’t open Excel files. What the actual eff? Mad Googling ensues. Whilst I question all of my life choices, I get another reply.

New User: “Hey, I fixed it. You can close my ticket out.”

I’m in unfathomable disbelief.

Me: “Wait, what? Seriously?!”

New User: “Yeah! I didn’t know I had to double-click Excel files to open them. I’ve never used it before.”

I’m just now starting to realize what has been happening.

Me: “What do you mean, you didn’t know to double-click?”

New User: “Well, I’ve never used Excel before. When I open it from the taskbar, I just click it once. I thought that’s how you opened the files.”

Me: “But… but I watched you open a Word doc?”

New User: “Yeah, that’s how I always open Word; I just double-click the file I need and Word opens. I didn’t know Excel did that.”

I summon my inner Tuvok from “Star Trek”.

Me: “That is… completely illogical. So, all the times I told you to open a spreadsheet and was watching you… you just clicked them once?”

New User: “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Head, meet desk; desk, meet head. I had never actually considered that it would be possible that someone would be single-clicking a file instead of double-clicking it. And after I picked my jaw up off the floor, I couldn’t believe I actually had to explain to a user that to open files, they need to be double-clicked — all files, for every program, all the time… FOR THE PAST THIRTY-PLUS YEARS.

All in all, I learned a valuable lesson from this. No matter how long you’ve been shackled to the Hell Desk, no matter how much you think you know about everything, and no matter how jaded you’ve become with stupid users over the years, NEVER, EVER overlook the absolute simplest, stupidest, mind-numbingly basic troubleshooting steps. Because users are stupid, and you need to be able to think equally as stupid.