A few weeks ago, the BBC ran an article about Excel.
Recently, Richard Nero brought it back into discussion.
Before even reading it closely, I found myself asking a more fundamental question:
What do people actually mean when they say “the power of Excel”?
Because the more you look at it, the more contradictory the answers become.
The Entertainment Definition of Power
Kat Norton
For Kat Norton’s audience, the “power of Excel” is inspiration.
It’s accessibility.
It’s confidence.
It’s “my boss was impressed.”
It’s personality-driven, high-energy, social-media-native Excel.
Is that power?
For her audience, absolutely yes.
But is that the power of Excel as a technology?
Or is it the power of presentation?
There’s a pyramid here. At the bottom of any field sits the largest audience — novices, early adopters, people just entering the room. It does not require deep technical mastery to impress that audience. That’s not an insult. That’s just structural reality in any domain.
So is that Excel’s power? Or is that simply Excel as a vehicle for engagement?
The Complexity Definition of Power
Omid
Vijay Verma (Excel BI)
Move up a level and you find a different definition.
Here, “power” means complexity.
Power Query.
M code.
LAMBDA chains that look like encrypted telegrams.
Python for Excel.
Weekly challenges where a simple problem receives a solution so intricate that the explanation becomes longer than the task itself.
Is that power?
In one sense, yes. Excel can absolutely do those things.
But let me offer an analogy.
If you need to fly from London to Nairobi for a meeting tomorrow, you take a direct flight. That’s power: speed, efficiency, objective alignment.
You could route via Sydney and Tokyo.
More cuisine.
More air miles.
More complexity.
But you miss the meeting.
So again — power relative to what objective?
My Definition of Power
My background is not social media.
It is not influencer training.
It is not engagement metrics.
It began in finance leadership in the early days of personal computing — working for Media Billionaire Richard Desmond in magazine publishing, when spreadsheets were not content — they were infrastructure.
For me, Excel was never entertainment.
It was responsibility.
Its power was:
- Making processes more secure
- Making reporting more robust
- Transforming inefficiency into efficiency
- Creating enterprise value
- Reducing risk
That is my definition of the power of Excel.
And when you compare that with other definitions, you begin to see the friction at the edges.
The Social Media Definition of Power
Paul Barnhurst
Six months ago, Paul posted:
“VBA – will it die?”
Huge engagement.
But I realised halfway through that discussion:
He wasn’t really talking about VBA.
He was talking about whether VBA still generates engagement.
Because if you look carefully, many social media discussions redefine “power” as:
Does this topic trend?
Does this generate comments?
Does this increase influence?
By that logic:
- Office Scripts is powerful if it trends.
- Python is powerful if it trends.
- VBA is “dead” if it doesn’t trend.
But that has nothing to do with what VBA was designed for.
VBA — Visual Basic for Applications — was built to:
- Manipulate the Excel object model at ground level
- Extend Excel
- Create new objects via class modules
- Automate architecture
None of the fashionable alternatives were designed for that same purpose.
So how can they “replace” it?
They can replace it in social media conversation.
But not in architectural intent.
The Sales Definition of Power
Anaplan
Colin Wall
In July 2023, Colin Wall wrote about “the power of spreadsheets” — while arguing that bottom-up budgeting cannot be done properly in Excel.
Here, Excel’s “power” becomes something different again.
Its power is that it is:
- Widespread
- Familiar
- Slightly chaotic
And therefore extremely useful as a strawman to sell ERP and FP&A platforms.
White papers still lead with:
Excel is dangerous.
Excel is chaotic.
Excel is hell.
So Excel’s “power” here is paradoxical — it is powerful because it helps sell products positioned as its replacement.
That’s a different kind of power altogether.
The Philosophical Turn
The power of a Ferrari can mean:
- Its engine performance
- Its ability to symbolise wealth
- Or its usefulness as an example of excess
The power of nudity can mean:
- Freedom
- Shock
- Or humiliation, depending on intent
Anything can be reframed.
So when someone says “the power of Excel,” the real question is:
Power for what?
- Power to entertain?
- Power to trend?
- Power to demonstrate complexity?
- Power to sell replacements?
- Or power to transform enterprise process?
Where Conflict Begins
Conflict appears at the boundaries.
When someone demonstrates Excel as entertainment, and someone else demonstrates Excel as enterprise architecture, they are not contradicting each other technically.
They are operating with different definitions of power.
But when those definitions overlap — when one claims superiority over the other — friction begins.
Because objectives differ.
And Excel, uniquely, sits across all of them.
My Conclusion (Before Even Reading the BBC Article)
Before analysing the BBC piece in depth or watching Richard’s video, I realised something important:
The phrase “the power of Excel” is almost meaningless without context.
It is one of the most philosophically elastic phrases in the technology space.
And in some cases, the power of Excel is defined not by what it does —
but by how it is positioned, marketed, or attacked.
That alone makes it worth exploring carefully.
Because unless we define the objective,
we can’t meaningfully discuss the power.
And perhaps that — more than any feature — is Excel’s real paradox.
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