Just get Excel. It is indeed one of the best pieces of software ever made.
That video changed my entire outlook (punny) on Excel. Before, I was of the opinion that, "a spreadsheet app is a spreadsheet app". But, no. Excel is insanely complex and capable. After a few years of Excel, I have a really difficult time using anything else.
Luicky, I can avoid all those tools mostly. I feel sad for those who cannot.
Personally, I use Gnumeric for Win32. Its old, but it does the job for me.
Use PowerQuery and PowerPivot for a few months and then try to go to Google Sheets, LibreOffice, Gnumeric, or any of the other supposed replacements.
It's like comparing the Gimp to Photoshop, except that I might be being unfair to the Gimp in this situation.
There is just a need to use the more complex features to do things and that can also show how changing a variable affects the overall analysis. I can't give people a python script or jupyter notebook and tell them to do x or y or z.
I can recreate all my calculations in excel, using python, with the same graphs and visuals, and give them instructions on what cells relate to what variables that affect the analysis so they can experiment for themselves.
With Google sheets, LibreOffice, etc., I haven't seen that kind of functionality.
I appreciate this wasn't one of my requirements in my original post, but is there a way to view or even edit Excel files on a phone? Not that I use that feature of Google Sheets much (the iPhone app is one of the least usable and worst apps in any category I've ever used) but it's nice to have in a pinch.
(I bought a Nokia Windows Phone back in the day, 10 years ago now I guess, and I was excited to hear it came with Excel! But I think I never got it to work.)