[strangeattractr]

I agree the excel is great for cleansing or processing small/medium sized data sets. It's great for comparing two or more data sets too. The thing that makes it great for these things is visual editing, and the ease of setting up formulas. This also makes it dangerous in business critical processes because it allows too great a surface for mistakes.

There's also the issue that they're often set up as an ad hoc analysis only to become a process carried out on a schedule. This gets particularly bad when macros are involved - especially when they're password protected.