By Hiran de Silva
There is one important clarification to the Helicopter Salesman analogy.
When I say that the ordinary family car has had a hidden switch for thirty years, I am not talking about some recently introduced Excel feature.
I am not talking about dynamic arrays.
I am not talking about Power Query, Python, Office Scripts, Power Platform, or any of the other technologies that have appeared during the last decade or so.
The switch in my analogy has a very specific name.
ADO.
ActiveX Data Objects.
And that distinction matters.
Because there is an understandable tendency, whenever Excel is criticised using arguments that originated ten, fifteen or twenty years ago, for the Excel community to respond:
“But Excel has changed enormously since then.”
And that’s true.
Many criticisms of Excel don’t take account of its modern capabilities.
But that isn’t my argument here.
My argument is considerably more awkward.
Because the capability I’m talking about isn’t new.
It was available thirty years ago.
The Switch Was Already There
ADO became part of Microsoft’s technology stack in the 1990s.
Its purpose is remarkably straightforward.
It allows an Excel workbook to connect directly to a relational database.
The connection can last milliseconds.
During that connection, Excel can essentially do two things.
It can PUT data into the database.
And it can GET data back.
PUT can mean inserting new records, updating existing records or deleting records according to specified criteria.
GET means querying the centrally held data and returning precisely the information that particular workbook, user or process requires.
Then Excel disconnects.
That’s it.
And yet that simple capability fundamentally changes the architecture of a spreadsheet process.
Instead of sending spreadsheets around…
Instead of emailing attachments…
Instead of maintaining multiple versions…
Instead of manually consolidating files…
Instead of asking which spreadsheet contains the latest information…
…the spreadsheets can communicate with centrally held data.
The spreadsheet becomes a client.
The relational database becomes the central hub.
Or, as I often describe it, the Digital Librarian.
The librarian receives information.
The librarian stores it.
And the librarian gives each spreadsheet exactly the information it asks for.
That is the hidden switch in the flying-car analogy.
Chaos and Order
This is why the helicopter salesman comparison is important.
The salesman identifies something completely genuine.
Traffic is chaotic.
Cars queue.
Roads become congested.
Journeys become unpredictable.
The helicopter appears to solve those problems because it operates using an entirely different infrastructure.
And this is remarkably similar to the way spreadsheet replacement products are sometimes marketed.
Look at the spreadsheet chaos.
Look at the attachments.
Look at the version-control problems.
Look at the consolidation.
Look at the manual processes.
Look at the risk.
All perfectly observable.
Then comes the sales proposition:
“You need our technology to escape all that.”
But suppose the car could already fly.
Suddenly the argument changes.
The salesman is no longer merely required to demonstrate that helicopters are better than traffic jams.
He must explain why the helicopter is better than the flying car you already own.
And that is a completely different comparison.
Because ADO means that Excel does not inherently require the file-based architecture being criticised.
Excel can operate as the front end of a centrally controlled relational data architecture.
And it has been able to do so for decades.
You Can Actually Look at the Switch
There is another reason I deliberately use the word switch.
On Windows desktop Excel, this isn’t entirely metaphorical.
In the VBA environment, look at the available References and you can find Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects.
The current library commonly encountered is Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 6.1.
And unless it has previously been selected, the reference is normally sitting there…
…unchecked.
Off.
Turn it on and VBA can use the ADO object library.
So when I describe a hidden switch inside the family car, I’m using an exaggeration for comic effect.
But not as much of an exaggeration as you might imagine.
There really is a capability sitting inside the environment which most spreadsheet users may never have been shown.
And It Predates ADO
Even the underlying idea did not suddenly appear with ADO.
Microsoft was publicly demonstrating Excel communicating with external enterprise data systems years earlier.
One fascinating historical example comes from Microsoft’s DevCast broadcast in December 1993.
One of the engineers demonstrating this emerging world of Excel connectivity was a young Microsoft employee called Satya Nadella.
Today, of course, he is Microsoft’s CEO.
That historical detail is important because it demonstrates that treating Excel as a client connected to external data wasn’t some obscure workaround invented by spreadsheet enthusiasts.
It was part of Microsoft’s own technological direction more than three decades ago.
ADO subsequently provided a stable and remarkably accessible way of doing it.
The Switch Has Modern Equivalents
There is one further point.
ADO belongs principally to the Windows desktop Excel/VBA world.
Today Excel also exists in browsers, on Macs and in programming environments based on JavaScript and TypeScript.
Those environments have different plumbing.
For example, modern web programming provides technologies such as Fetch, allowing applications to communicate with external services and exchange data.
The implementation is different.
But the high-level idea doesn’t change.
GET.
PUT.
Data moves between the spreadsheet interface and centrally managed data.
So the point of the Helicopter Salesman Sketch is not that everybody should use one particular 1990s Microsoft technology forever.
ADO is evidence of something much more significant.
The architectural capability isn’t new.
Which Creates an Uncomfortable Question
And this brings us back to the salesman.
Imagine motorists have spent thirty years being told about the terrible problems associated with driving.
Traffic jams.
Queues.
Congestion.
Delays.
Collisions.
And entire industries have developed products promising to liberate motorists from those problems.
Then somebody discovers the switch.
The family car could fly all along.
At that point, the most interesting question is no longer:
“Is the helicopter a good product?”
It might be an excellent product.
The interesting question becomes:
Why did nobody mention the switch?
And when the salesman continues describing the horrors of traffic…
…without mentioning that the customer’s existing vehicle can already leave the road…
…the question becomes sharper still.
Is he selling the superiority of his helicopter?
Or is he selling the customer’s ignorance of their own car?
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