Our take on this: users like spreadsheets. The spreadsheet interface is the goose that lays the golden eggs; it's what allows so many people to get so much done

Our take on this: users like spreadsheets. The spreadsheet interface is the goose that lays the golden eggs; it's what allows so many people to get so much done. Thus any replacement for Excel has got to preserve the spreadsheet UI and preserve it in a relatively familiar way. Those criteria narrow down the class of possible replacements. We met with a group of spreadsheet support people once at a fairly large company where, as is typical, IT was trying to force the users off their spreadsheets. Here is how they said users were actually using the spreadsheet-replacing-proper-enterprise-apps that they had been mandated to use: 1. Open the enterprise app. 2. Paste the data into Excel. 3. Do whatever they want.