[Out_of_Characte]

Excel is really easy to use for smaller data collection and manipulation. There's no input validation, signing and other complicated design decisions needed to start an excel spreadsheet. There's alot of tools out there for easy integration. So its not something you need to switch away from once you have rather static requirements. Billions are just numbers that fit inside a cell just fine until someone complains.

[TylerE]

And then once you need actual calling Access lags far behind even MySQL.