[daemonologist]

Now if someone mails or faxes you that spreadsheet? You're screwed.

Spreadsheets are not the biggest problem though, as they have a reliable 2-dimensional grid - at worst some cells will be combined. The form layouts and n-dimensional table structures you can find on medical and insurance documents are truly unhinged. I've seen documents that I struggled to interpret.

[KoolKat23]

To be fair, this is problematic for humans too. My old insurer outright rejected things like that stating it's not legible.

(I imagine it also had the benefit of reducing fraud/errors).

In this day and age, it's probably easier/better to change the process around that as there's little excuse for such shit quality input. I understand this isn't always possible though.