By Hiran de Silva
The words legacy and obsolete carry an air of dismissal. Legacy suggests we tolerate something old until it can be replaced. Obsolete suggests it is already redundant. But what happens when the so-called old continues to underpin the present, and the new is not quite sufficient on its own?
In the Excel world, this tension is very real. We have features and practices that have been with us since the 1990s—VBA, pivot tables, ODBC connections—that some dismiss as “legacy.” At the same time, we have a stream of innovations—dynamic arrays, Power Query, Power BI—that are positioned as the future.
But here is the question: if today’s “new” is just tomorrow’s “legacy,” does that mean we are always caught in a cycle of waiting for the next big thing? Or can we imagine a new new—something beyond simply inheriting yesterday’s tools and today’s features?
The Bridge Between Old and New
A thoughtful observer like Christopher T. Finn might point out that the real answer is a mixture of old and new. And that is true. Many of the most effective enterprise solutions I have seen rely on that blend. But it’s not simply a blend—it’s a bridge.
The bridge is this: the principles of system design, data flow, and management outcomes are timeless. The tools change, but the architecture—the way we think about process, collaboration, and scalability—transcends versions and fads. Excel’s past and present converge in this architecture, and it is here that the future is seeded.
What Comes Next?
So how do we glimpse the “new new”? We start by watching the signals:
- From paper to digital to data-driven. We’ve already moved from tick-and-bash reconciliations to append-and-summarise tables. The next step is live, centralised data flows where the spreadsheet is a lens, not the container.
- From features to frameworks. The future is not in the next function or ribbon button, but in the client-server patterns Excel has quietly supported for decades. The “Digital Librarian” model, where Access or SQL holds the truth and Excel GETs and PUTs, is a prototype of the future, not a relic.
- From individual skill to enterprise leverage. Excel will remain on a billion desktops. But the real shift is how those billion users are connected to shared processes and live data. The power is not in teaching one more clever formula, but in showing how an organisation’s collective intelligence can be harnessed.
Predicting and Shaping
This is where thought leaders have a unique responsibility. We are not just spotting gaps in today’s training market. We are tooling up for tomorrow’s reality. More importantly, we can shape tomorrow’s reality by demonstrating what is already possible and normalising it.
If we continue to frame “legacy” as obsolete, we will abandon powerful capabilities—like VBA and ADO—that remain the fastest bridge to enterprise-scale solutions. If instead we frame them as foundations of the new new, we not only predict the future, we prepare people to thrive in it.
Preparing for the New New
The task, then, is twofold:
- Predict where Excel is going by reading the signals and principles that transcend features.
- Shape that direction by demonstrating today the architectures that will become tomorrow’s norm.
We stand at Excel’s 40th anniversary. It is tempting to split history into “legacy” and “cutting edge.” But the real story is more subtle—and more exciting. The new new is not a rejection of the past, but a reinterpretation of it. It is the moment when the overlooked foundations finally reveal their full potential.
And for those of us willing to think differently, that is not just a prediction of the future. It is an invitation to shape it.
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