by Hiran de Silva
A recent LinkedIn post by Donabel Santos reflects a very common misconception: the belief that a spreadsheet and a database are essentially the same thing—or that you must choose one over the other.
This misunderstanding isn’t new. It’s been with us since long before computers, and it’s been amplified by social media “thought leaders” who never learned where the real boundary lies.
Two Functions, Two Histories
From the earliest days of civilisation, people have needed to store information. Ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and royal courts kept records—lists of goods, workers, taxes—engraved on clay, stone, or papyrus. These were the first databases: structured, permanent stores of facts, accessible to those authorised to update or query them.
But alongside storage, there was another function: analysis.
A scribe, clerk, or accountant would take a subset of the data, work out answers for a specific problem, and produce calculations or summaries. These “working papers” were temporary—they were not the master data itself.
So from the beginning, there were two distinct roles:
- Database: the controlled, structured store of truth.
- Spreadsheet (or equivalent): the analytical workspace for extracting meaning.
When the Boundaries Started to Blur
In the paper-based 20th century, the lines blurred. Office workers often wrote lists on analysis paper; accountants might jot calculations in the margin of a ledger. The tools of storage and the tools of analysis were physically interchangeable.
With the arrival of personal computers in the 1980s, the blur became a fog. Under DOS, you could only run one application at a time—so software vendors began bundling basic database functions into spreadsheets (Lotus 1-2-3, for example) and vice versa. This was convenient, but it was a compromise, much like keeping permanent records in the margins of your scratch paper.
And so began the “wild west” of digital data management: multiple people keeping their own “databases” inside their spreadsheets, each slightly different, each potentially wrong.
The 1990s Revolution That Should Have Ended the Debate
By the mid-1990s, two breakthroughs changed everything:
- Networking – applications could share data across multiple machines.
- Multitasking – computers could run more than one application at once.
This paved the way for client-server architecture—data stored centrally in a real database, accessible to multiple applications. Microsoft Office Professional 4.2 (mid-1990s) made this easy. Excel, Word, and PowerPoint could connect directly to Microsoft Access or SQL Server. Bill Gates called this the Digital Nervous System.
From that point on, there was no need to keep your master data in a spreadsheet. Excel could query, update, and work with data stored safely in a proper database. The spreadsheet vs database “either/or” was obsolete.
Why the Confusion Still Exists Today
Despite 30 years of capability, the old habit persists. Many Excel users still store their “master” data in workbooks because that’s what they’ve always done—or because influencers teach Excel as if it’s still 1989.
The result? We’re still having arguments on LinkedIn about whether to “use a spreadsheet or a database,” as if the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. In fact, the real power comes when you combine them.
A Practical Example: Budget Consolidation
Consider budget consolidation across hundreds of departments.
- Old method: each department’s workbook links to a master consolidation workbook. If one file is moved, renamed, or closed, the whole model breaks.
- Modern method (since the 1990s): each department uploads its numbers into a central Access table. The consolidation is just a SQL query—fast, reliable, and instantly adjustable (“Total for France,” “Total for EMEA,” “Total for global” are all the same query with a different filter).
The first method is fragile. The second is enterprise-grade, yet it still uses Excel as the user’s workspace.
The Takeaway
The spreadsheet vs database “debate” is a relic of the pre-client-server era. For 30 years, Excel has had everything it needs to work hand-in-hand with a proper database. This isn’t about choosing one over the other—it’s about synergy:
- The database ensures one version of the truth.
- The spreadsheet provides the flexibility of analysis.
If you’re still keeping your master data in spreadsheets, you’re not just ignoring best practice—you’re ignoring three decades of progress.
As Excel Turns 40…
Next year marks Excel’s 40th anniversary. For 30 of those years, it’s been capable of enterprise-level integration with databases. And yet, much of the celebration will focus on “new” features that make the spreadsheet behave more like a database—a path that often increases complexity, fragility, and confusion.
Perhaps the real milestone to celebrate is not another feature, but the moment we finally stop treating database and spreadsheet as competitors, and start using them together, as they were meant to be.
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