Excel just isn’t a database (evidenced by the fact that Microsoft also has Access) and it also just isn’t a one stop shop for analytics. Having spent 17 years in academia, I’m well aware that people are resistant to learning new things and also aware that sometimes you NEED to.

Sure you can do some line fitting and sensitivity analysis stuff and that is great for preliminary work, but excel is just not the one stop shop people want it to be. PowerPoint is also turing complete, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should program with it.

The fact that the month rename problem is killing scientific data is just a smell related to the fact that sometimes you’ve got to stop and ask yourself “what am I trying to do” and “what tool should I be using to do it”.

IMO excel should be left to the MBAs and management: if you are smart enough to do set up analysis of variance or run a t-test or have an intelligent discussion about p values, you SHOULD NOT be dependent on excel.