Fundamentally they need a tabular data store. Most everything else is a nice to have/usability point. SQLite is also an auto contained file. There are similar

Fundamentally they need a tabular data store. Most everything else is a nice to have/usability point. SQLite is also an auto contained file. There are similar tabular GUI tools that could let you interact with sqlite using a similar workflow. Users knowing that thing is not inherent, they had to be trained on it, and they can be retrained as they will be for other workflows and business tools. Remember, you still need an external app (Excel) to open it's files, the files themselves are just data, exactly like sqlite. So you could just make an excel plugin to interface with SQLite. SQLite is as version-able as an excel file, as in not very with standard tools. Why are you pasting images into excel? Doesn't matter, sqlite handles that fine actually. https://www.sqlite.org/fasterthanfs.html https://www.sqlite.org/fasterthanfs.html The main argument against sqlite is that you would need to build an interface or figure out how to train folks on existing tools. That's not a huge argument against it in my experience, it's a strong social/political one in many orgs but rarely a technical issue.