The solution is actually just not using Excel. If you're essentially using Excel as a LOB backend and database, that should probably not be in Excel.

It's fine if you have a few formulas. As soon as you're busting out macros it's time to sunset the workbook and make an application. There's a lot of God Excel workbooks sitting around on share drives with no audibility or quality control.

▲

justapassenger 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, there's many many cases that should likely not be using Excel.

But given that Excel is the second-best tool for everything, world runs on it.

And when you try to build systems to replace Excel for a specific task, you quickly learn how extremely powerful Excel is and how hard is to replace it and add value that customers would care about.

▲

array_key_first 16 hours ago | parent [-]

I've been there, the problem is that replacements are not as versatile or "floppy". But that's also a good thing, because Excel is too versatile to the point where most workbooks are filled with bugs on top of bugs and nobody cares.

	▲	justapassenger 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, bugs in sheets are worst part of excel, by far. But many end users prefer dealing with bugs than with inflexible software that doesn’t understand all the different ways how real world is messy and hard to model. I hate using Excel. But I 100% understand why world runs on it.