'I grew up with it': readers on the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel
Excel’s 40-year reign as the default spreadsheet tool inspires both admiration and frustration, with many arguing it remains unmatched for performance, complex modeling, and universal adoption in business, finance, and engineering. Commenters contrast it with Google Sheets, LibreOffice, Numbers and newer tools, noting that while web-based and open-source options excel at collaboration or cost, they often fall short on speed, features, and handling large or intricate models. At the same time, people highlight serious downsides: fragile “spaghetti” workbooks, audit and error risks, and the way Excel becomes an all-purpose hammer for tasks better served by databases, code, or specialized systems.
Excel vs Google Sheets and Other Tools
- Many see Google Sheets as “good enough” for simple, collaborative work, but not for large or complex models.
- Excel is widely considered faster, more stable, and far more feature‑rich than Sheets, Numbers, and LibreOffice Calc, especially for big datasets, pivots, Solver, advanced functions, and VBA.
- Some users have never touched Excel due to working in Google Workspace–only or open‑source environments, illustrating starkly different professional toolchains.
- Numbers is liked for UI and basic tasks, but often criticized as slow and missing advanced features; LibreOffice Calc is praised for being free but called buggy and behind on functions.
Performance, Capabilities, and Limits
- Multiple accounts report Google Sheets and web Excel struggling or stalling with large or complex sheets; desktop Excel usually copes.
- Complaints include Sheets’ cell limits and severe recalculation latency, and Excel’s odd constraints (e.g., “too many fonts” errors).
- Some argue most users never need Excel’s “power user” features; others say that last 10% of functionality is critical in finance, BI, and engineering.
Collaboration, Cloud, and Privacy
- Sheets is praised for frictionless real‑time collaboration and forms; historically this was its major edge.
- Several say modern Excel with OneDrive/SharePoint now collaborates “almost seamlessly,” though others still see sync errors.
- Some refuse cloud tools (especially Google) over privacy, data mining, and AI‑training concerns, preferring local Excel or OSS.
Excel as Programming and Modeling
- Excel is framed as a de facto programming environment and “virtual machine” accessible to non‑programmers.
- Many careers in software started with VBA; others built extremely complex financial or engineering models, simulations, and even “spreadsheets as applications.”
- There’s interest in safer, more testable, type‑aware spreadsheet paradigms, but concern that making Excel “more like programming” would destroy its approachability.
Business Reliance, Standardization, and Risk
- Excel’s ubiquity is seen as its killer feature: everyone from auditors to tax authorities to CFOs understands it, making it the default medium for models and evidence.
- Some argue this standardization outweighs technical inferiority; others call it a “hammer‑and‑nails” trap that enables fragile, opaque workflows and tech debt.
- Studies and anecdotes about pervasive spreadsheet errors are cited; auditability is seen as partial and human‑process‑dependent, not a guarantee of correctness.
Alternatives and Future Directions
- Mentioned alternatives include RowZero, Airtable, DuckDB, Grist, Klaro, Quantrix, and ideas like multi‑language formulas, stronger data types, versioning/diff, better macros, and closer database integration.
- Consensus: Excel remains dominant; competitors either excel at niches or are still far from matching its breadth plus ecosystem.