I found R to be the solution for me. I faced the exact same problem when I wanted to quickly plot lots and lots of X-ray spectra. It was slow and tedious to do

I found R to be the solution for me. I faced the exact same problem when I wanted to quickly plot lots and lots of X-ray spectra. It was slow and tedious to do in Excel because it involved repetitive plotting of similar data. I put my data into Access, then accessed it using R via ODBC. The cost was the time to validate my data and get it into a database. The benefit was that subsetting and plotting the data became very straightforward, and the source of error was the query and plotting script. Transposition, highlighting the wrong cells, not pasting the correct data, etc were eliminated as sources of error. Plotting via a script is to plotting by hand in excel what using a computer is to photocopying, cutting and pasting physical paper. Repetitive plotting and storing data: tasks for which excel is not really designed.