Excel as a Relational Database: Three Paths, Three Outcomes

By Hiran de Silva

For decades, Excel has been viewed as “just a spreadsheet.” Yet in the right hands, it can behave like something far more powerful: a relational database. Recently, I’ve seen two contrasting examples on social media that show this idea in action, each with its own strengths and limitations.

But there is also a third way—one that changes the game for collaboration, scale, and business transformation.

Two Familiar Approaches

1. Christopher T. Fennell’s Method

Christopher demonstrates how Excel’s data model can be used like a relational database. This is an exciting proposition—the idea that Excel itself can host relationships between tables. It’s elegant, it’s powerful, and for a single user on a single machine, it works well.

The challenge arises when you try to share the results. Each time new data is added, the import process must be repeated and the updated workbook redistributed to thousands of people. Someone has to administer this process.

2. Mynda Treacy’s Method

Mynda Treacy, a respected Excel educator, teaches a design where a user form on one sheet writes data into a list on another sheet. Again, this is clever, accessible, and appropriate for individual use cases.

But at scale the same issues appear. Data still ends up consolidated in one workbook, requiring an administrator and repeated redistribution whenever updates occur.

Both methods are solid for personal solutions. The problem is what happens when you try to scale personal solutions into collaborative processes. That’s when complexity, duplication, and “Excel Hell” appear.

A Third Alternative: Hub-and-Spoke Collaboration

Now imagine a different requirement.

A chairman of a global corporation, a music enthusiast, wants to share his CD collection with employees around the world—and to browse theirs in return. Thousands of staff need to contribute their lists, browse the consolidated collection, and keep everything up to date without manual intervention.

How do you do this in Excel?

Here’s how:

1. Each employee opens a simple template and lists their CDs.
2. They click one button: Put.
3. Their list is automatically uploaded to a shared relational database.
4. At any time, they can click Get All to see everyone’s collection, or My CDs to view their own.
5. Filters allow them to search by artist, genre, or even perform a fuzzy lookup.

No emails. No administrators. No repeated distribution. The process is unattended and automatic.

Behind the Scenes: Excel + Database

This isn’t complicated.

• In seconds, Excel can create a blank Access database in a shared folder—no Access license needed.
• A simple table is created: Title, Artist, Genre, Username.
• The VBA code to implement Get and Put is only a few lines long, and readily available.

The result? Excel is no longer just a spreadsheet. It is the client in a hub-and-spoke architecture, with the shared database acting as the hub.

Why It Matters

The key difference is this:

• Christopher and Mynda’s methods are appropriate for single users, working on isolated tasks.
• The hub-and-spoke method is appropriate for collaborative processes, working across hundreds or thousands of people.

Trying to scale single-user approaches into collaborative requirements is what creates chaos, duplication, and Excel Hell. By contrast, giving Excel a relational database backend provides:

• Scalability: works for 10 users or 10,000.
• Transparency: easy to extend in-house.
• Cloud-readiness: the same Access database can be migrated to SQL Server in minutes.
• Future-proofing: the architecture mirrors what modern SaaS tools promise, but with tools you already own.

Conclusion

Excel can act as a relational database—but the method matters.

• For personal solutions, Christopher’s and Mynda’s approaches are excellent.
• For collaborative, global, enterprise-level needs, a hub-and-spoke solution is the way forward.

This is not about one method being right or wrong. It’s about selecting the right approach for the right problem. If your requirement involves wide collaboration, unattended updates, and scalability, Excel’s hidden database capabilities can deliver—all with simplicity, minimal cost, and zero IT bottlenecks.

That, I believe, is the real future of Excel.