As somebody with non-existent experience with Excel, I could totally see myself getting a lot of value out of LLMs, if nothing else then simply for telling me what's possible, what functions and patterns exist at all etc.

Yeah definitely has some value in that sense. That in itself isn't enough to make a dent in the work though.

Think of it this way - an IDE can tell you what functions an object has or autocomplete something is useful to a beginner & learning. But that's not what puts food on the programmers table - writing code that solves real problems does.

Same in excel business use cases - the numbers and formulas don't matter directly - their meaning in a business context does. And that connection can be very tenuous. With code the compiler is the ultimate arbiter - it has to make sense on that level. Excel files it's all freestyle - it could be anything from your grandmas shopping list to a model that runs half a bank.