I also think this is only true because a generation of office workers have been trained to believe it is true. We don't have a better option because it is impos

I also think this is only true because a generation of office workers have been trained to believe it is true. We don't have a better option because it is impossible for an alternative to be established. Excel begets Excel. Further lock-in like VBA on Excel desktop, the crippled capability of the web version, and second class support on platforms other than Windows should not be taken as virtues of Excel. Forcing everything into a "document" paradigm sucks. Needing the editor to view the data is awful. There is no separation of concerns between content and presentation. Opening a file in the state the last person edited it in is horrible. Conceded it is a powerful application, but what I see it used for mostly us visual grid layouts using cells, rather than true tabular data. I constantly see PMs using it to painstakingly make gantt charts, when MS Project is available. It's one step away from oil and canvas.