[n4r9]

I'm not disputing that a competent computer user can do it. From the perspective of "this is what I would do if I was a scientist", you're totally correct.

But when you're writing guidelines for an entire field - as the article describes HGNC doing - you're catering to all researchers in that field: good, bad, and ugly. Plus technicians, editors, admins and anyone else that might handle the files. Given how hidden and unintuitive Excel's behaviour is here, I think what they're doing makes sense.