Excel is very powerful as a general-purpose tool. In addition to all the calculation systems built-in and easy-to-use, the "UI" (the grids and cells and chart/d

Excel is very powerful as a general-purpose tool. In addition to all the calculation systems built-in and easy-to-use, the "UI" (the grids and cells and chart/drawing tools) is extremely customizable, and VBA lets you do basically anything. It's the non-techie's IDE. This is what makes it so useful for business users, so hard for any other spreadsheet app to unseat, and so notorious among hackers (who often have to troubleshoot or replace complicated mega-workbooks)!