By I’m a daily user of Excel, in fact, I rarely go 30 minutes without opening a spreadsheet. It has become such a core part of my workflow that I sometimes find myself questioning how we all use it.
One thing I’ve consistently observed over the years is this, when people have a list, say 100 items starting in row 2 because row 1 is the header, many will manually type their own numbering in a separate column: 1, 2, 3… all the way down.
And it always makes me pause. Why are we creating our own numbers when Excel already has row numbers built in?
Microsoft (and every spreadsheet for that matter) invested on enormous effort into those row indices. Yet we ignore them and recreate our own.
– Is it habit?
– A sense of order?
– A fear that the row numbers aren’t “part of the data”?
Or maybe we’re just used to doing things a certain way, even when the tool already gives us what we need.
If your list starts at row 2, the count of your items is simply last row number minus one. It’s already there. No extra column, no manual numbering, no dragging formulas down. Right?
It makes me wonder whether Microsoft ever considered making row numbering more “data-integrated.” or we need better user education on leveraging built-in features.
Or maybe people genuinely prefer having “their own” numbers as part of the dataset.
This tiny habit reveals a much bigger truth about how we use tools:
We often reshape technology to fit our habits, instead of reshaping our habits to fit the technology.
Maybe there’s an opportunity for Microsoft, or anyone building productivity tools, to rethink how we can make the obvious even more obvious.
Until then, I’m still fascinated by how d
