Excelweitwurf

[pne]

I’ve heard “Excelweitwurf” occasionally here at work, and am a bit disappointed that there’s essentially one Google hit for the hyphenated form “Excel-Weitwurf” and none for the one-word form. Does nobody else use it, then?

Literally, it means “throwing Excel far”, but it alludes to sports such as shot put, hammer throwing, or mobile phone throwing (called Handy-Weitwurf in German) which are called “xxx-Weitwurf”. It refers to data interchange by emailing Excel documents around, rather than more automatic forms of data interchange. (For example, a conference where the website is updated not directly from the sign-up application but by having the secretary email the webmaster an Excel spreadsheet with new attendees every day, or that kind of thing.)

Comments

[green_knight]

I hadn't heard it, but you're describing my current (hopefully not much longer) workpace to a T. It uses an immensely complex process of transferring data into Excel sheets which then have to be downloaded manually via FTP and reports on access databases that are uploaded equally manually to be combined by hand so the next day's excel sheet can be created.

This is not a Mom-and-Pop outfit which might be forgiven; it's a multinational corporation. The mind, she boggles, but at least she now has a term for this.