[czzr]

Excel can deal with it, as long as you store the data in rows not columns.

Storing in columns is so odd and inconvenient that honestly I cannot imagine how someone managed to build this.

(Assuming the stories about this are correct, I don’t think there is a definitive statement yet.)

[makomk]

There is - it was stored as rows, but in an old Excel format with a 65,536 row format. Also, apparently neither Dido Harding nor NHS Test and Trace were at fault - they delivered results fine, it was a problem with an internal system developed and run by Public Health England (which is due to be replaced with an agency run by Harding, but hasn't been yet): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54422505 So the article and its headline are both partisan and wrong.