[gpresot]

I always found that excel can be as simple and as complex as you need it to be. You can use it to write your shopping list (ok, not ideal), or a small budget, and you can ramp it up for really complex simulations. Once you know vlookup, indirect/match, sumif/countif and very few other formulas (for example text manipulation to clean and harmonise data inputs), you can do really interesting stuff even with datasets of thousands of lines. I found that often in excel the most difficult stuff is not the back-end (data analysis and simulation) but the front end (i.e. giving the user a clear interface for inputing data and conditions in the model, and visualising outputs, for example with buttons, constrained inputs, conditional formatting etc.).

[surfsvammel]

Why not ideal for shopping list? When we go skiing with a couple of friends, we setup a long shopping list in excel, there each row has the name, category, amount and amount unit.

Before heading into the store we have a Pivot table sum it all up, group everything by category sorted by the order those categories are encountered when walking though the store.

This way it takes 2-3 people less than an hour to shop for a 4 day trip for 10-20 people. One holds the list, and then 1 or two runners go fetch stuff.

It’s been perfected over the years:)

[gpresot]

Hats off for this. I was thinking more about as a substitute of a simple paper list (or if on mobile, just a list on whatever default note app is you have in iOS or Android)