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The biggest problem with spreadsheets is that they are often used in lieu of more appropriate tools because of poorly considered IT policies and organizational practices which leave no other tools available to users and fail to provide adequate support for users on some tasks for which programming is required and other tools are more suitable.

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Actually, I think this is the biggest strength of spreadsheets, that no one has taken advantage of yet. Most of what you term as poor IT policies is just what (in my personal experience) just users finding something that works for them. And software developers don't seem to take note of this.

You are right that there are lots of better tools for tasks users use excel for, but 2 which spring to mind for me that devs haven't paid attention to are form/table design and databases:

Form design: It used to (ok, still does) drive me crazy when I see excel used to make flyers and forms to be printed out. But for the users what could be easier than drawing a box on the screen, adding a line weight, and then drawing other boxes inside that using the convenient spreadsheet grid? Why hasn't someone designed an app that works that simply?

Databases in excel are another monstrosity, but for a lot of users, all they want is a simple lay of listing things which they can then sort, and maybe sum a few totals on. Firing up a complete RDBMS is over kill for this use case.

So I see the biggest problem with spreadsheets as why aren't we learning from the way people use them and putting this into action?

There are tools that do that, even more simply than Excel does. That's a separate issue, e.g., app discovery, corporate approval in some cases, and people unwilling to use the best tool for the job.

Or maybe those tools lack some features and that's why people decide to improvise with spreadsheets?

... No, my comment is specifically targeted at the example of making simple boxes, lines, and text. There are trivial tools for making diagrams where the barrier of entry is lower, and the ease of use is higher. I provided reasons why those tools aren't being used more.

The barrier to entry may be lower if you consider a user who has never used either software and is trying to make a decision. But if you have a user who has used Excel for the past 2 decades and is comfortable with it, low barrier to entry is still higher than just "go with what I know."

... Which is one of the reasons I listed for not using it, and unrelated to features.

> Most of what you term as poor IT policies is just what (in my personal experience) just users finding something that works for them.

No, what I am terming "poor IT policies and organizational practices" is people being restricted as to what tools they are permitted to use in a blanket way that doesn't consider task specific needs, and having imposed difficult, inefficient, bureaucratic processes to get either permission to use other tools or support from the people that are permitted to use other tools, and/or which result in poor quality of support when those authorized to other tools do end up supporting them (often, again, because of inefficient, bureaucratic processes.)

You can disagree with my perception that this one of the biggest problems with spreadsheets, but please don't try to redefine what I'm actually talking about.

I apologize. I tried to make it clear that I was giving my opinion, via my personal experience. I'm sorry if you somehow feel I was trying to redefine what you are actually talking about. I was not. I was just trying to engage in conversation with you about people and spreadsheets. And maybe your terms, from what you have seen (or maybe you are talking about some kind of official research into why people do what they do with spreadsheets) are more true than what I've seen, but honestly, in my 25+ years of working with various businesses, I've yet to come across someone who worked strangely with spreadsheets because of company restrictions. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, this is just from my single data point, my own personal view. Not trying to redefine what you're talking about, just saying my opinion.

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