When I used to be an "IT guy", everything had to be in Excel. I begged to switch to Access. Hell, I even built a few prototypes in Access in my free time to demonstrate how much better it would be (I was still a student).

My point: Over time, I came to appreciate Excel and realize what an amazing program it is. It is accessible to pretty much anyone who knows how to use a computer, and at the same time can basically be used to create mini-programs.

That's the reason you only have the two choices you mentioned: a) do it the wrong Excel way b) do it the huge giant IT initiative way

Also, Excel does provide the ability for both the data type and foreign key constraints you mentioned.