[MaulingMonkey]

> One thing I never understood about Excel is why the cells which have formulas don't look different than cells which contain leaf-data.

There are some styles actually meant for this, but you have to apply them manually.

> 2ndly why not allow users name their columns, why do they have to always be "A", "B", "C", .. ?

Named columns do exist actually! Not of the excel sheet itself - but in tables you can mark within that sheet. You can use the names in equations and everything. You can also name individual cells as well.

Joel Spolsky has a whole talk where he goes into this and some of the other stuff Excel has that you might not realize it has: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c

[juped]

By far the worst UI choice in Excel, which has stopped many potential power users from forming, is that "Format as Table" is named like a visual formatting option, is stuck on the ribbon next to visual formatting options, and prominently makes you pick colors and border formatting.

Whereas the reality is that making a table is the on-ramp to many of Excel's more powerful features.

[galaxyLogic]

I imagine that some developer or team had to hide such useful features under the name of "table formatting" because they could not get the ideas through in their organization. Don't know but I imagine.