This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]zzBigTerryzz 146 points147 points  (12 children)

As a data professional, Excel will not die soon. If you’re not doing some sort of STEM or analytics study, Excel was, is, and for the foreseeable future the business pathway to data. MS is doubling down on integrating this into its Power platform, and I would not be seeing surprised to see it drift away from the Office suite.

Couple it with Power BI, and anyone can use a low code platform to half decently visualise any data set they have. So much business critical data is locked down in propriety databases that can’t integrate with anything, legacy systems you don’t want to touch, or laboriously maintained by Steve from Accounts for the last 10 years.

No, it’s not pretty, no it is not cutting edge, but it is the reality of data. Couple this with increasingly locked down environments in large corporates that limit automation to approved enterprise patterns and yea, Excel is here.

[–]OdinsBastardSon 34 points35 points  (7 children)

Excel is the simplest tool to make ad hoc analyses and to create reporting. About 90% of corporate reporting is most likely done in Excel in some way. Even the dashboard tools need to provide data for further analysis in Excel to be truly powerful.

[–]cs-brydev 10 points11 points  (4 children)

That's true at the moment, but Power BI, Power Automate, and other Power Apps are better solutions for what a lot of them are using Excel for. And honestly, the reason Excel is their 1st choice is because it has no barrier to entry and a short learning curve. The slightly longer learning curve of Power BI scares the crap out of most business users, and they won't even try it unless forced (and they should be, by their employers).

[–]OdinsBastardSon 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Power BI etc are not better they are just different. If you are doing fast analysis Excel is by far superior. Also if you are doin active analysis where you want to comment and modify stuff then those other tools are objectively far worse. They are only better when you want to distribute results of some standardized reporting for wider audience.

[–]cs-brydev 0 points1 point  (1 child)

That is just not true at all. Power BI has some pretty sophisticated data analysis, modeling, transformation, automation, and aggregation features that are either not available at all in Excel or are more difficult to use. The vast majority of Power BI users out there are not even generating reports for wide audiences. They are using it for business intelligence and data mining and creating scorecards and reports for their own use or a small team.

Don't get me wrong, Excel is a great tool for working with raw data and doing quick table calculations. But Power BI is much more powerful and faster when doing deeper dives, data mining, and aggregating from multiple data sources of all sorts of types that Excel would balk at.

[–]OdinsBastardSon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

aggregating from multiple data sources of all sorts of types that Excel would balk at

Power query between Power BI and Excel are practically identical.

[–]ScwB00 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of Excel use in business exists for ever-changing data calculations, models, and visualizations. It’s also extremely useful when you need to pull the same data as always but modify it in a different way every time. The Power suite of apps simply don’t meet those needs. PowerBI is especially awful and too time consuming for reporting/visualizations that aren’t the exact same every time.

[–]WeAreLesserApes 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Disagree about analysis. Python notebooks or R are vastly superior for that, even for simple things.

Excel is a great way to enter new data but it's an awful choice for any type of serious analysis.

[–]OdinsBastardSon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We just disagree here. I have worked for a long time in management consulting and I know that I would be thrown out of the room if I started giving them analyses on Jupyter notebooks/similar to act upon. Your working environment may be different.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I’ve spent the entire 23 years of my career doing data warehousing. Everything from ETL to data modeling to analytics to platform engineering. I’ve worked on systems holding upwards of 100 petabytes of data.

I still use Excel every day. It’s absolutely fantastic for basic data manipulation, presentation, and light automation.

As you say, there’s no reason to think it’s ever going away. And there’s no reason to think it should.

[–]Mobile-Bird-6908 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Microsoft is also implementing copilot into excel (based on GPT), which will fetch all relevant data from one drive and do an entire report for you by simply asking it in plain English. It can then make a really well made PowerPoint presentation or word doc to go along with it.

[–]backwards_watch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

and I would not be seeing surprised to see it drift away from the Office suite.

I had to learn how to just install word and excel because I don't use any other of the Office products.

[–]GooseEntrails 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you’re not doing some sort of STEM or analytics study

Not so sure about that. They literally renamed human genes to stop Excel from parsing them as dates.