[WillAdams]

I really wish multi-dimensional spreadsheets were more popular --- Lotus Improv was _amazing_, but unfortunately, Quantrix Financial is not something I could convince my employer to pay for, let alone justify for my own purchase, and sadly Flexisheet seems moribund.

Pyspread has some interesting features along those lines.

[ghaff]

There were a number of alternative spreadsheet models trotted out over time. But things had pretty much coalesced around the 2D Visicalc/Lotus model for mainstream users. Excel did add features like pivot tables but, basically, once Microsoft Office became dominant with Windows that sort of cemented what an office suite looked liked at least until you added in video conferencing. So you don't, for example, really have a mainstream desktop publishing program that goes beyond the limitations of word processing offerings.