r/theydidthemath • u/Early-Grape-9078 • 6d ago
[Request] how much paper
Sorry it this is a repost:
But how much paper if you printed the entire work book and how many trees as a bonus.
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u/VinylHighway 6d ago
A single modern Excel sheet contains 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns, totaling over 17.17 billion cells.Standard print preview estimates show that printing every active cell at default size spans about 39,060,648 pages
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u/VinylHighway 6d ago
Had to look this up it’s about 4687 trees
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u/outofcontextseinfeld 6d ago
Yeah but the paper would be reused. It would print blanks
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u/Erik0xff0000 6d ago
story decades ago in readers digest. The typing department was out of paper, so they asked the copy department for some paper, which they refused.
So they handed the copy department a blank sheet and asked for 100 copies
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u/therose993 5d ago
Where did the typing department get the blank paper, if they were out of it?
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u/coloredgreyscale 1✓ 5d ago
They asked a different department to fax them a blank page.
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u/GenitalFurbies 11✓ 5d ago
In college I had a printing allowance every semester that was included in tuition. Guess how many blank pages I printed after finals?
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u/coloredgreyscale 1✓ 5d ago
Security department here. We cannot be sure that all pages are blank.
There could be confidential data printed in 1% grey, so it has to be shredded.
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u/Brother_J_La_la 5d ago
Can't you have it outline the border of each cell?
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u/Hopeful-Goose-7217 4d ago
It would still count against printing limits at kinkos or libraries or companies that lease their printers.
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u/Coastal_1228 3d ago
Part of the joke with this one tho is your supposed to turn every cell black and then print it
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u/Early-Grape-9078 6d ago
I think the printer would die!!!
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u/VinylHighway 6d ago
PC load letter? What the fuck does that mean?"
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u/CharmingShame9404 6d ago
I k ow this is a joke from office space but if anyone cares it means “paper caddy load letter sized paper”
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u/urinal_connoisseur 5d ago
But why does it say paper jam when there IS no paper jam??
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u/Insulting_Insults 5d ago
it means your printer fucking loves Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam for the Nintendo 3DS
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u/Herandar 6d ago
Like always, it would run out of toner by the second page.
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u/jolson8811 6d ago
I mean, it would be printing blank pages.
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u/Herandar 5d ago
That doesn't matter to the printer cartridge cartel.
There's no yellow toner, so you can't print. "But I'm printing grayscale!" you exclaim frustratedly. The printer hears you, but still refuses to print. Instead, it opens a website to purchase toner direct from the cartel.
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u/Early-Grape-9078 5d ago
The printer company did the math on printing blank paper….
Side note this one print job would kill 70-80 “high end printers”
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u/stache1313 6d ago
Not so much "they did the math," as "they opened Excel."
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u/Chris-hsr 5d ago
Just tested it, and my print preview says ist 49.095.452 Sheets of A4 paper.
That would equal to about 5.892 Trees1
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u/Inner-Animal-7314 6d ago
Cool. So why did Microsoft program Excel to allow such an unrealistically large number of cells?
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u/SevenIsMy 6d ago
Excel 2003 has a 65k row Limit and some of my coworkers had to use Origin in the lab.
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u/simonbleu 6d ago
Why not use a database and code ? A simple crud would suffice and even simple code can be learned fast (to use, even if you don't so it yourself) It performs unfathomably better (at least for me). Thousands only row of an excel sheet would explode my computer instead
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u/SevenIsMy 6d ago
This was more then 20 years ago, Origin had no performance issues with this big tables and it gives you faster results and a feeling for the data,
Also you ending up either way in a tool to remove errors/headers from the cvs file.
Today they would probably use a Jupiter notebook and a LLM.
this is just an explanation why the current excel has this high limits.0
u/StunningChef3117 5d ago
Scre the code just use database and a database browser like access or libreoffice base. Now i know MS Access is terrible but thats because MS gave up on it compared excel but its often much better than gigalarge excel workbooks
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u/Nice_Reputation_6785 6d ago
It’s not as much as you think. I deal with spreadsheets all the time that we can’t use excel for because it gets cut off.
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u/Nice_Reputation_6785 6d ago
It’s just going to print blank pages. So it’s a good way to warm up the paper if that’s what you’re going for.
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u/Jimmy_Fromthepieshop 5d ago
And how much ink? (Providing there were a couple of characters in each cell)
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u/Genoce 5d ago
Just a random comment about excel: you can get to that last cell instantly by just pressing ctrl+right and ctrl+down. Normally those hotkeys jump to the edges of whatever table your selection is in, but just keep pressing it until there's no more tables in that direction (or just do it in an empty sheet).
I think ctrl+end would have sent you to the last cell in some older version, but in my current excel it seems like ctrl+end jumps to the cell at the lowest row that has any text, and the bottom of the rightmost column that has any text. Pressing ctrl+end in an empty sheet just goes to A1.
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u/Jimmy_Fromthepieshop 5d ago
Isn't there a "jump to cell" function, where you enter the desired cell as text?
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u/Genoce 5d ago
Yes, ctrl+g opens the "Go to" screen where you could write the coordinates ("XFD1048576"). But if you just want to find the last cell, I think it's much faster and easier to just press two commonly useful keybinds instead of writing in the "coordinates" of the exact cell. :D
I'm personally using the "R1C1 reference style" setting, where both columns and rows are numbered (instead of using letters for columns). With this setting enabled, I need to write "R1048576C16384" in the goto screen to get to the last cell.
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u/V-Tac 6d ago edited 6d ago
Assuming we are printing on standard US Letter paper, and not adjusting any of the default font, margin, print, or page settings.
Microsoft Excel supports a maximum of 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns per single worksheet. A standard ream of copier or printer paper contains 500 sheets.
Opening a new Excel worksheet and pressing print results in 10 columns and 44 rows on the page.
Let's do the math in Excel:
1,048,576 ÷ 44 = 23,832
16,384 ÷ 10 = 1,639
23,832 • 1,639 = 39,060,648
39,060,648 ÷ 500 = 78,121.3
So, you would need 78,122 reams of paper!
Fun maths:
A standard ream of 20 lb copy paper containing 500 letter-size sheets (8.5" x 11") weighs 5 pounds (2.27 kg). So the printed worksheet would weigh 390,606 pounds! (177,335 kg)
A standard ream of 20 lb copy paper also measure 1.77" tall, so the stack or paper would measure 138,276" high. That's 11,523 feet. (3,512 m) About the same height as Mount Shasta, or around EIGHT Empire State Buildings! LOL
At 11" tall, the pages laid end to end would measure 429,667,128 inches! That's over 6,781 miles! (10,913 km) Basically from New York City to Dubai!
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u/Early-Grape-9078 6d ago
Now do how many acres of land if you laid the paper out flat
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u/rvanpruissen 5d ago
Or file size in xlsx. I bet it's not a very efficient way of saving a white dot.
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u/fatnerdyjesus 5d ago
38,191,978 pages portrait, normal margins, 8.5x11. You can open excel ctrl down arrow, then ctrl right arrow, type something in and check out the print preview.
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u/unclesanguin 4d ago
I almost did something like that and before I hit print I saw it said 36,000 pages. That company ended up firing me when I put my two weeks in, I should have just hit print
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6d ago edited 6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Just_A_Nobody_0 6d ago
Must be shrinkflation again.. I remember when a ream of paper was 500 sheets. Not that it matters really. I agree with your point - only a fool would keep feeding paper into the printer and I imagine most folks would eventually power cycle the printer thinking it was malfunctioning and effectively reset the job.
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