Excel isn’t a data entry tool. It’s a rather sophisticated analysis tool for tabular data. It’s success is derived from the fact that it’s very good at this, an

Excel isn’t a data entry tool. It’s a rather sophisticated analysis tool for tabular data. It’s success is derived from the fact that it’s very good at this, and is so easy for users to pick up. Mind boggling amounts of commerce and administration are driven my Excel. It is however most suited to accounting and logistics tasks. For any more novel use case, you’re going to have to put some thought into how you use it, or use a more suitable alternative. Even for the tasks that it’s very well suited to, there will always be more sophisticated alternatives. But I’d consider the way it lowers the the technical barriers to entry an overwhelming positive, even if it doesn’t completely absolve the users from learning about how their data works. I have the same frustrations with developers who have been trained by ORMs to have no idea how RDBMSes work. But I consider it their fault for not learning their trade properly, rather than the fault of the people who make nice tools to help them.