Financial forecasting and modeling, accounting, budgeting, and any business process where human-readable formulas matter. VBA macros enable powerful in-house automation. The universal language for sharing financial data — if it needs to be understood by anyone in business, use Excel.
Still the default language of business — accounting, forecasting, and anything that needs to be shared with non-technical stakeholders. Its functional programming model (pure declarative DSL) makes it genuinely powerful for the right use cases. Gets replaced by Python/BI tools when complexity grows.
Complex data pipelines and analytics at scale — Python and BI tools are significantly more powerful. The Ribbon UI slows down power users. Bank statement CSV imports are painful with inconsistent formats. Becomes a maintenance nightmare as a core business system.
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At this point, the question is whether LLMs are going to be more useful than excel. AI enthusiasts are 100% sure that it’s already more useful than excel, but on the ground, non-technical views do not reflect that view.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: General productivity and business analysis
The reason was simple enough - it had been founded by finance people who were used to Excel, so Windows+Office was the non-negotiable first bit of IT they purchased.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Finance and business operations tool
Smartsheets... are more popular, at least with our employees, than Excel
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Spreadsheet software being replaced by alternatives
Excel supports this in several different ways (frozen columns, VLOOKUP) and users expect it in just about any table-oriented GUI tool.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Table-oriented data work with row labels
An Excel sheet won't cut it! (In fact, Excel is not allowed anymore as it can be manipulated after the fact, so you'll need actual bookkeeping software.)
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: double-entry bookkeeping for a small business
Perhaps there are some poor souls who use Excel for bookkeeping, but this is generally impossible for any company that is audited.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: bookkeeping and accounting
I do agree with the idea of incorporating Excel... as tools, especially if they displace Ed-tech software that adds unnecessary abstractions.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: math and science as a tool
On a mobile device you have to do an additional tap (double tap in Excel) to start typing.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Editing spreadsheet cells on mobile
Excel wasn't cutting it either - we couldn't see it.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Creating seating charts for wedding planning
the marketer is stuck between building a one off report in a spreadsheet... The alternative to low code isn t code, it is excel spreadsheets.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: building one-off reports as a last-resort alternative to low-code tools
Excel is no longer a moat or the moat.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Being a competitive advantage (moat)
I’m trying to find Excel on steroids for data analysis and reporting that connects to DBs directly, does database exploration, connects or offers a BI tool and has convenient integrations like PowerAutomate.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: data analysis and reporting that connects to DBs directly, database exploration, and integration with automation tools
Can't do that with Excel.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Publishing content to the internet
Airtable compares favourably with Excel for the ad hoc database use case.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: ad hoc database use case
I really, really want something that kind of takes an Obsidian-like approach to local databases, sort of like Excel Airtable but with flat, human-editable text files.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Implied reference point for a local database/spreadsheet functionality
You have to reach the pain threshold in order to look for alternatives to Excel.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: managing data
Excel has COM automation going back to the old days; from many programming languages on Windows you can instantiate Excel.Application and then script it as if you were using the GUI - and have the GUI visible and showing you what is happening.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Automating spreadsheet tasks via COM and enabling real-time collaboration on Office365
They do all the maths calculations to find if the voltage has seen a sudden drop or if current has gone too up too much. It has taken whole of their to fix the excel to identify one KPI such as reverse current.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Anomaly detection on millions of rows of utility metering data (e.g., voltage drops, reverse current)
You can't open two files with the same name because Excel seems to have some global state between windows; to the point where you might be hitting Control+Z to undo some changes, and it's undoing stuff on the other spreadsheet without you noticing.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Casual data manipulation (opening CSV, removing rows, moving data) and performing a LEFT JOIN via Power Query
The only advantage Excel has over this is ease of maintenance - it's a lot easier for someone to guide themselves through updating things on a spreadsheet... If you're dependent on an obscure, unique Excel feature, I could at least see the argument that your use case is too hard to migrate off of.
Hacker News • HackerNews • Use case: Compared to custom apps for tasks like budget/finance bookkeeping, sales tracking, and licensing management
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