The Problem is not Excel, but how it is used

Johan Smith

Let me get this out of the way: I’m not anti-Excel.

I have spent most of my career working with data, finance, reporting, and systems, and like many professionals, I have built and reviewed lots of spreadsheets. Excel is a brilliant tool, when used well. And that is the key: when used well, and for the right purpose.

Unfortunately, I keep seeing the wrong use. A growing mountain of complexity, misuse, use for the wrong purpose, and dangerous workarounds, disguised as "productivity."

And two recent trends really hit a nerve.

1. The Cheat Sheet That Isn’t

Lately, I see people increasingly promote “Excel cheat sheets” with titles like: “50 Must-Know Excel Functions” or “100 Excel Functions You Need Today”. These slides are packed with functions.

Since when did a cheat sheet become a phone book? That's like inventing abbreviations that are longer than the words they are meant to describe. Like arguing that "LWFTTFFTSIW" is a useful acronym to describe "Snow" (spoiler: this isn't useful !! even though there is a nice ring to Little White Flaky Things That Fall From The Sky In Winter ..)

The whole point of a cheat sheet is to aid your memory and give you quick access to the essentials. If you need to use 50+ or 100+ functions in your formulas, the problem isn’t your memory, it’s the complexity of your spreadsheet.

These kinds of promotions don’t help you; they reinforce the idea that more formulas = better Excel skills. But in reality, they’re promoting how to build ever-more overly-complicated spreadsheets, often with convoluted logic, ill-designed formulas, hardcoded values, cross-sheet references, and lookup gymnastics.

And here's the bigger issue: instead of encouraging people to move to structured, process-driven systems, they keep glorifying complexity in Excel.

If your financial model requires so many different functions and complex formulas, it might be time to ask yourself: “Should this still live in Excel?”. Is there a better system for this purpose?

There comes a point where Excel becomes the wrong tool for the job, not to mention the (absence of) collaboration, versioning, access control, and auditability.

The problem is not Excel itself, but how it is being used.

Now, let’s move to something even worse.

2. The AGGREGATE Illusion

One of those “most useful” functions you see on nearly all Excel cheat sheets is the AGGREGATE() function. Why? Because it allows you to ignore errors in your data while still calculating sums, averages, and other statistics.

What?? Let's think this through, and break it down:

Your spreadsheet contains missing data, bad data, bad formulas, and errors such as #DIV/0, #VALUE, #REF, and instead of fixing the root cause, you want to calculate the total value while ignoring these errors? This would be the total value of ... what exactly?

That’s not problem-solving. That’s sweeping your mess under the rug, and putting a nice plant on top of it. What on earth is the point of an incomplete and unreliable total value? You might as well use RANDOM() * 1000.

It’s willful ignorance, not insight. Worse still: it creates the illusion of reliable data. Managers and stakeholders see a number in a cell, assume it's correct, and base decisions on it. Meanwhile, the underlying errors are silently growing.

It’s no surprise that study after study shows that up to 90% of spreadsheets contain errors. Not because Excel is broken but because these kind of workarounds have become standard practice.

Errors should be fixed at the source, not hidden out of sight with a formula. This ill-conceived and fundamentally flawed function should never have been added to Excel.

What’s the Alternative?

You don’t need fancy cheat sheets. You need systems that are fit for purpose.

At XLReporting, we help organizations move away from fragile Excel jungles to structured, process-driven, and auditable models that still offer flexibility, but without the chaos.

• Need a forecast? Use a structured input model.
• Want to consolidate? Use controlled data flows.
• Need calculations? Define them once and apply them consistently.

And if something goes wrong, we don’t hide the error, we show it so you can fix it.

Because at the end of the day, reporting isn’t about fancy numbers or just any number. It’s about reliability, control, and making decisions you can trust.

Would you like to explore how XLReporting can help you? Request a demo today! Click here