By Hiran de Silva
This presentation demonstrates that the $100-billion industry which has emerged over the past two decades — claiming to replace Excel — is, in fact, superseded by a $12-a-month subscription.
We begin by acknowledging the central message of that industry:
“Excel can’t do that.”
So, to prove the superiority of a $12-a-month subscription over a $100-billion industry, all we need to do is prove that claim wrong.
A typical example comes from Workday Adaptive Planning.
Over ten years ago, they published their white paper “Nine Circles of Excel Hell.”
Recently, it has been rebranded as “Nine Circles of Spreadsheet Hell.”
But the message inside remains identical.
You’ll notice that every sales presentation from the ERP, FP&A, and “alternative to Excel” industries always includes the same line:
“You can’t consolidate with Excel.”
That phrase sits at the very heart of the demonisation of Excel.
The Nine Circles of Excel Hell lists nine supposed weaknesses — nine areas where Excel is said to fail.
In this presentation, we will demolish each of those claims.
We’ll do it using a principle I call the Digital Librarian.
It’s a simple concept.
Excel already has the built-in ability to store its data outside the spreadsheet — in a central location — where it can be updated and queried from any workbook across the network.
That’s the crux of the error made by the Excel-demonising industry.
In the next section, I’ll explain the principle behind the claim “Excel can’t do that,” and show how the hub-and-spoke architecture — what I call the Digital Librarian — makes that claim spectacularly wrong.
Then, we’ll go through each of the Nine Circles to illustrate why those arguments collapse when Excel is viewed in its true, enterprise-grade form.
Finally, I’ll expand on the bigger picture — that Excel, when used in a client-server, hub-and-spoke, cloud-leveraged, Digital Librarian architecture, is not only capable… it is superior.
Superior in availability, accessibility, agility, and affordability.
That is the miracle of Excel.
The Principle Behind the Claim “Excel Can’t Do That.”
Let’s look closely at the root of this claim — the foundation on which the “Excel replacement” industry has built its empire.
When they say “Excel can’t do that,” what they really mean is this:
They have only ever seen Excel used as a standalone file.
One workbook.
One user.
One department.
And in that narrow world, they are absolutely right — because Excel, used that way, is confined to the box it was born in.
But that’s not what enterprise Excel is.
When Excel connects to its own Digital Librarian — a central data model that lives outside the workbook — everything changes.
Now, Excel becomes a client.
The data model becomes the server.
Together, they form a hub-and-spoke architecture, exactly the same principle used by the very cloud platforms that claim to replace Excel.
The only difference is that Excel already has this capability built-in — through the ACE database engine that ships with Microsoft Office itself.
No add-ons.
No external tools.
No subscriptions beyond the one you already have.
This is the point the $100-billion industry missed — or perhaps preferred to ignore.
Because if Excel can already act as its own front-end and its own client in a networked data architecture, then the entire premise that “Excel can’t do that” collapses instantly.
In the next section, we’ll go through each of the Nine Circles of Excel Hell, one by one — and show how, once Excel is allowed to operate in its true hub-and-spoke form, every single one of those so-called limitations disappears.
That’s not just theory.
That’s reality — and that’s the miracle of Excel in action.
Intro to “The Principle Behind the Claim”
So where does this idea come from — this notion that “Excel can’t do that”?
It didn’t appear out of nowhere.
It grew slowly, over years of misunderstanding.
Each time Excel was used as a simple file instead of as a connected system, the myth grew stronger.
Every broken link, every overwritten cell, every lost version — became another story that seemed to prove the myth true.
And soon, that myth became a market.
A $100-billion market — built on the assumption that Excel is a toy, not a tool.
But here’s the truth.
Excel was never the problem.
It was only ever the way Excel was being used.
The miracle begins when Excel is allowed to work the way it was designed —
not as an isolated file,
but as a living, connected window into a central, trusted data model.
That’s the architecture I call the Digital Librarian.
And it’s the key to understanding why the claim “Excel can’t do that” is not only wrong — it’s spectacularly wrong.
Now let’s look at the principle behind that claim, and why the very foundation of the “Excel replacement” industry was built on a misunderstanding.
The Principle Behind the Claim “Excel Can’t Do That”
So where does this idea come from — this notion that “Excel can’t do that”?
It didn’t appear out of nowhere.
It grew slowly, over years of misunderstanding.
Each time Excel was used as a simple file instead of as a connected system, the myth grew stronger.
Every broken link, every overwritten cell, every lost version — became another story that seemed to prove the myth true.
And soon, that myth became a market.
A $100-billion market — built on the assumption that Excel is a toy, not a tool.
But here’s the truth.
Excel was never the problem.
It was only ever the way Excel was being used.
The miracle begins when Excel is allowed to work the way it was designed —
not as an isolated file,
but as a living, connected window into a central, trusted data model.
That’s the architecture I call the Digital Librarian.
And it’s the key to understanding why the claim “Excel can’t do that” is not only wrong — it’s spectacularly wrong.
Let’s look more closely at the root of this claim — the foundation on which the “Excel replacement” industry has built its empire.
When they say “Excel can’t do that,” what they really mean is this:
They have only ever seen Excel used as a standalone file.
One workbook.
One user.
One department.
And in that narrow world, they are absolutely right — because Excel, used that way, is confined to the box it was born in.
But that’s not what enterprise Excel is.
When Excel connects to its own Digital Librarian — a central data model that lives outside the workbook — everything changes.
Now, Excel becomes a client.
The data model becomes the server.
Together, they form a hub-and-spoke architecture, exactly the same principle used by the very cloud platforms that claim to replace Excel.
The only difference is that Excel already has this capability built-in — through the ACE database engine that ships with Microsoft Office itself.
No add-ons.
No external tools.
No extra subscriptions.
This is the point the $100-billion industry missed — or perhaps preferred to ignore.
Because if Excel can already act as its own front-end and its own client in a networked data architecture, then the entire premise that “Excel can’t do that” collapses instantly.
In the next section, we’ll go through each of the Nine Circles of Excel Hell, one by one — and show how, once Excel is allowed to operate in its true hub-and-spoke form, every single one of those so-called limitations disappears.
That’s not just theory.
That’s reality — and that’s the miracle of Excel in action.
Circle One: “You Can Accidentally Delete Data.”
Workday’s first accusation against Excel is simple — and frightening.
“You can accidentally delete data.”
That statement sounds powerful.
It paints a picture of chaos — files scattered across folders, formulas broken, and months of work lost with one careless keystroke.
But notice something subtle.
This claim only makes sense if Excel is being used as a filing cabinet.
A fragile collection of disconnected workbooks.
And that’s exactly the misunderstanding the entire “Excel Hell” narrative is built upon.
Because when Excel is connected to its Digital Librarian, none of that chaos exists.
In the Digital Librarian model, the master data doesn’t live in the spreadsheet at all.
It lives safely and centrally in a relational database — the very same database engine Microsoft uses with Access and Excel.
Your spreadsheet doesn’t hold the data — it asks for it.
It retrieves what it needs through a GET instruction.
And when you make updates, it sends them back through a PUT instruction.
No duplication.
No overwriting.
No accidental deletions.
You can close the workbook.
You can even delete the workbook.
The data remains intact — because the data was never in the workbook in the first place.
It’s the same principle as a library.
You don’t destroy the books just because you take notes from them.
You’re simply interacting with the central collection — through the librarian.
That’s what Excel becomes in the Digital Librarian architecture —
not a vault full of fragile formulas,
but a living, controlled window into a reliable system of record.
So, the first circle of Excel Hell — “you can accidentally delete data” — collapses immediately.
Because in the real, enterprise-grade Excel — the Excel with its data model stored outside the workbook — deletion isn’t even possible.
It’s not Excel that’s fragile.
It’s the way people have been using it.
The spreadsheet becomes the window, not the warehouse.
And the first myth of Excel Hell is gone.
Circle Two: “Version Control Is Impossible.”
Workday’s second claim is this:
“Version control is impossible in Excel.”
And again, if we imagine Excel as a cluster of disconnected files — it sounds true.
Different users.
Different folders.
Different filenames.
“Budget v4 Final,” “Budget v4 Final FINAL,” “Budget v4 Final Use This One.”
We’ve all seen it.
That’s the swamp — the world where version control truly is impossible.
But remember: that’s not Excel’s fault.
That’s the result of treating Excel like a photocopier instead of a client.
In the Digital Librarian model, there’s only one version of truth — and it lives in the central data model.
Not in your spreadsheet.
Not in mine.
Not in anyone’s desktop folder.
Every workbook simply connects to the Librarian to pull the most current data, live, on demand.
You’re not downloading “version five.”
You’re seeing the latest, authoritative version — directly from the source.
And if you submit new data, it’s stored centrally too — timestamped, user-tagged, and immediately available to others.
That’s not “version control.”
That’s version elimination.
It’s the same way cloud platforms like Anaplan or Workday themselves operate.
But here’s the irony — Excel has had that same capability built in all along, through the ACE database engine that ships inside Microsoft Office.
You don’t need new software.
You don’t need new licenses.
You simply stop copying files and start connecting to data.
When that shift happens — from workbook-centric to data-centric — the entire concept of version control disappears.
Everyone is looking at the same truth, through their own window.
So, Circle Two — “version control is impossible” — is another illusion.
It’s only impossible if you insist on staying in the swamp.
But in the Taj Mahal of Excel — the Digital Librarian — version control isn’t a problem to solve.
It’s a problem that no longer exists.
Circle Three: “Collaboration Is Chaotic.”
The third accusation says:
“Collaboration in Excel is chaotic.”
And again — in the swamp — that seems true.
Hundreds of files.
Scattered folders.
People emailing attachments back and forth, merging edits, comparing versions, and losing track of who changed what.
That’s not collaboration.
That’s confusion.
But it’s not Excel that causes it.
It’s the way Excel is confined — trapped in the single-file mindset.
Now, look at the same process through the Digital Librarian.
Here, the collaboration doesn’t happen through files — it happens through data.
Each department, each manager, each budget holder — works on their own workbook.
But every workbook connects to the same central data model.
So when Finance opens their version, they’re not opening a copy — they’re opening a live window into the same shared dataset.
When Operations updates a forecast, it’s instantly reflected across the system.
When the CFO refreshes the consolidated report, the numbers appear in real time.
No chasing files.
No reconciling sheets.
No “who has the latest copy?”
Everyone is working together — without ever touching each other’s files.
That’s true collaboration — not by sharing documents, but by sharing data.
And the beauty is, Excel has always had this ability.
Under the hood, it’s simply talking to its ACE database engine, the same relational engine that powers Access.
In other words: the team isn’t emailing spreadsheets.
They’re connecting to the Digital Librarian — the one trusted source that coordinates all updates.
So the claim “collaboration is chaotic” vanishes the moment we move from the swamp to the Taj Mahal.
In the swamp, collaboration means “passing files.”
In the Taj Mahal, collaboration means connecting to truth.
And that’s Circle Three — closed.
Circle Four: “Data Integrity Can’t Be Trusted.”
Workday’s fourth claim says:
“You can’t trust the data in Excel.”
And again — in the swamp — that sounds convincing.
Formulas get overwritten.
Cells get edited.
Someone changes a figure without explanation, and suddenly the entire report is in doubt.
But that’s not a flaw in Excel.
That’s a flaw in how Excel is handled.
When data lives inside the spreadsheet, yes — it’s vulnerable.
But when data lives inside the Digital Librarian, it’s protected by structure, not by hope.
In the Digital Librarian model, every piece of data sits in a proper relational table — with field types, rules, and relationships.
You can’t put text in a number field.
You can’t delete a record that doesn’t belong to you.
And you can’t “accidentally” change a total — because totals aren’t stored as numbers at all; they’re calculated on retrieval.
That’s not a spreadsheet — that’s a controlled data environment.
Each workbook becomes a view — a lens that shows you the data you’re authorised to see, and allows updates only where appropriate.
That’s how enterprise systems maintain integrity.
And that’s exactly how Excel can do it too — when it’s connected to its own ACE-powered Digital Librarian.
In that architecture, Excel stops behaving like a loose collection of cells.
It behaves like an application interface.
And here’s the irony:
The same vendors who accuse Excel of being unreliable are using exactly this architecture themselves — a central database with multiple connected clients.
The only difference is that in their world, you pay thousands per seat for the privilege.
In Excel’s world, it’s already included — for twelve dollars a month.
So Circle Four — “data integrity can’t be trusted” — dissolves instantly.
Because when you separate the data from the display, integrity isn’t something you worry about.
It’s something you get by design.
Circle Five: “Security Is Weak.”
Workday’s fifth claim says:
“Security in Excel is weak.”
And again — if you imagine Excel as a loose file floating through email chains — yes, that’s true.
Anyone can open it.
Anyone can change it.
Anyone can copy it.
But that’s not a problem with Excel.
That’s a problem with how Excel is being used.
Because Excel itself is not the security perimeter.
The Digital Librarian is.
In the Digital Librarian architecture, the data is not stored in the spreadsheet.
It’s stored in a central relational database — the ACE engine — located in a secure folder or on a controlled network drive.
Access to that data is permission-based.
A workbook can only see or update the tables it has been authorised to query.
You can lock down entire datasets, limit updates to certain users, and even log every transaction — all using standard database security principles.
In other words, Excel becomes the window — not the vault.
The vault is managed by the Librarian.
You can protect it with NTFS permissions, Active Directory, or Azure authentication.
You can back it up automatically, restore snapshots, and track every write operation.
That’s enterprise-grade security — inside a $12-a-month environment.
So when people say “Excel is insecure,” what they really mean is “we used Excel as a document, not as a system.”
Once it’s connected to the Digital Librarian, security isn’t weak — it’s professional.
It’s controlled.
It’s centralised.
And the data is safer than in most cloud-based tools — because you know exactly where it lives, who owns it, and how it’s accessed.
So Circle Five — “security is weak” — collapses like the rest.
Excel, used properly, isn’t a loose file.
It’s a secure, governed gateway into your own central data.
That’s the difference between the swamp and the Taj Mahal.
And that’s why the fifth circle of Excel Hell no longer exists.
Circle Six: “Auditability Is Impossible.”
Workday’s sixth claim says:
“You can’t audit Excel.”
And once again, that sounds true — if Excel is used as a personal sandbox of cells and formulas.
When data, calculations, and reports are all tangled together in one file, yes — it’s difficult to trace what changed, when it changed, or who changed it.
But that’s not Excel’s limit.
That’s a design problem.
Auditability isn’t something you bolt on at the end.
It’s something you build in from the start — and Excel, through its Digital Librarian, does exactly that.
Here’s how.
When the data sits inside the Librarian — in proper relational tables — every update, insert, or delete can be logged automatically.
Each record can carry timestamps, user IDs, and version history.
That’s auditing — built into the structure of the data itself.
Your spreadsheet becomes simply a client interface — a view that sends instructions like:
“Update this record,”
“Add this transaction,”
“Retrieve the latest totals.”
The audit trail lives with the data — not the workbook.
You can even implement multi-level authorisation:
one user enters data, another approves it, a third consolidates it.
All those actions leave a transparent, traceable footprint.
Compare that to the so-called “modern” cloud systems.
Their audit logs sit in black boxes — only visible to administrators.
You can’t verify what’s really happening behind the curtain.
In the Digital Librarian, the audit trail is yours.
Local. Transparent. Inspectable.
And here’s the beauty: all of this happens without any extra software, just by using the ACE database engine already built into Microsoft Office.
So Circle Six — “auditability is impossible” — collapses.
Auditability isn’t missing from Excel.
It’s missing from how people think Excel works.
When you separate the data from the display, Excel becomes not just auditable — it becomes accountable.
And that’s the hallmark of a true enterprise system.
Circle Seven: “Consolidation Is Manual and Error-Prone.”
Workday’s seventh claim is the one they love the most.
“Consolidation in Excel is manual, slow, and full of errors.”
It’s the headline argument — the showpiece in every sales pitch for ERP and FP&A tools.
And on the surface, it sounds irrefutable.
Because we’ve all seen it:
hundreds of spreadsheets from dozens of departments, each with its own layout, its own formulas, its own logic.
Finance spends nights and weekends merging files, chasing submissions, fixing broken links, and hoping the totals balance in the end.
That’s the swamp.
The broken world where Excel is treated like a paper form.
But that is not the world of the Digital Librarian.
In the Digital Librarian architecture, consolidation doesn’t happen inside a spreadsheet at all.
It happens automatically — in the central data model.
Each department’s workbook connects directly to the same Librarian.
When a user clicks “Submit,” their data is uploaded to the central table — row by row, securely and instantly.
When Finance clicks “Refresh,” Excel retrieves all current data from the Librarian in seconds — pre-consolidated, structured, and complete.
No external links.
No copy-paste.
No Power Query refresh loops.
No VBA gymnastics.
Just clean, two-way data flow between Excel and its central database.
And here’s the twist:
this is exactly how the $100-billion “alternative to Excel” industry works.
A central database.
A network of connected clients.
A hub-and-spoke architecture.
The only difference?
Excel already does it — natively — through the ACE database engine built into Microsoft Office.
So when they say “Excel can’t consolidate,” what they really mean is “we never tried it the way Excel was designed to work.”
In the swamp, consolidation is a nightmare.
In the Taj Mahal, consolidation is just a query.
So Circle Seven — “consolidation is manual and error-prone” — is not only wrong.
It’s the clearest proof yet that the miracle of Excel has been hiding in plain sight.
Circle Eight: “Reporting Is Inconsistent.”
Workday’s eighth claim says:
“Reporting in Excel is inconsistent.”
And again — in the swamp — that sounds true.
When every department builds its own version of a report, with its own columns, formats, and logic, you end up with chaos.
Numbers don’t match.
Formulas drift.
Definitions vary.
That’s not inconsistency — that’s independence gone rogue.
But here’s the truth: Excel itself has never been the problem.
The problem is that most people use Excel as a report, not as a window into data.
When Excel connects to its Digital Librarian, the inconsistency vanishes.
Here’s why.
All the reports — across every department — draw their data from the same central model.
That means every figure, every definition, every metric originates from the same source.
Change a business rule in one place, and it’s reflected instantly across all reports.
Update a lookup table, and every workbook that uses it is aligned automatically.
That’s consistency — not because you trained everyone to be careful, but because the system enforces it by design.
Each report becomes a lens — a customised view over the same underlying truth.
So when Finance looks at margins,
when Operations looks at volumes,
and when HR looks at headcount —
they’re all seeing their slice of the same dataset, not their own homemade versions of it.
In the swamp, reporting is inconsistent because every workbook carries its own truth.
In the Taj Mahal, reporting is consistent because every workbook connects to the same truth.
And here’s the irony:
The very vendors who accuse Excel of inconsistency are doing the same thing themselves — connecting multiple dashboards to one central data model.
They just hide that fact behind a glossy user interface and a thousand-dollar license.
Excel can do it natively — with no external tool at all.
So Circle Eight — “reporting is inconsistent” — collapses.
When the data lives with the Digital Librarian, reporting isn’t inconsistent.
It’s coherent.
It’s synchronised.
And it’s instant.
Circle Nine: “Excel Doesn’t Scale.”
Workday’s ninth and final claim says:
“Excel doesn’t scale.”
And that’s the one that truly built the $100-billion “alternative to Excel” industry.
It’s their ultimate trump card.
The moment they say it, most people stop thinking.
Because they imagine Excel as a desktop file.
A few thousand rows.
A single user.
A few lookups and pivots before everything slows to a crawl.
But that’s not Excel’s limit.
That’s just Excel misused.
The truth is that Excel was never designed to store millions of records.
It was designed to connect to them.
When Excel works with its Digital Librarian — a central relational database powered by the ACE engine — scale stops being a problem altogether.
The workbook becomes a front-end, not a warehouse.
It simply sends SQL instructions to the Librarian:
“Get me this data.”
“Put this update.”
“Return these totals.”
The heavy lifting — storage, indexing, joining, filtering — happens inside the Librarian, not the spreadsheet.
That’s exactly how enterprise systems scale.
And Excel, quietly, already does it the same way.
You can store millions — even tens of millions — of records in the central database, and every workbook still opens instantly, because it’s only pulling what it needs.
That’s real scalability.
And it’s already built into the tools you own.
So when people say “Excel doesn’t scale,” what they really mean is “we never used Excel as a client-server system.”
But in the hub-and-spoke architecture, Excel scales horizontally across departments, vertically across regions, and globally across enterprises —
without changing a single formula,
without breaking a single link,
and without buying a single extra licence.
It’s not that Excel doesn’t scale.
It’s that the swamp version of Excel doesn’t scale.
The Taj Mahal version — the Digital Librarian version — scales effortlessly.
And that’s the irony:
the so-called modern cloud platforms are built on the same architecture Excel already had.
They simply wrapped it in a web page and rented it back to you for a thousand times the cost.
So Circle Nine — “Excel doesn’t scale” — collapses completely.
Because Excel, when used the way it was meant to be used, doesn’t just scale.
It scales better — faster, cheaper, and more transparently — than the systems that claimed to replace it.
And that brings us to the heart of the revelation.
The Nine Circles of Excel Hell never described Excel at all.
They described the swamp — the old way of working.
But when you discover the Digital Librarian, you realise that Excel was never the problem.
It was always the solution — hiding in plain sight.
That is the miracle of Excel.
The Revelation
So, after all nine circles… what do we really see?
We see that every accusation against Excel — every so-called “circle of hell” — only applies to the way Excel is misused.
Each claim collapses the moment Excel is allowed to work the way it was designed.
When the data lives outside the workbook —
When every sheet becomes a window, not a warehouse —
When the Digital Librarian becomes the hub that connects them all —
The chaos disappears.
No broken links.
No version nightmares.
No lost data.
No confusion.
No swamp.
Instead, we find elegance.
Structure.
Simplicity.
And scale.
The miracle of Excel isn’t a new feature, or a hidden menu, or a clever formula.
The miracle is architectural.
It’s the discovery that Excel, the tool we already own, is capable of everything the $100-billion “alternatives” claim to do — and more.
Because Excel, when used with its Digital Librarian, becomes a true client-server system —
a live, two-way, multi-user platform that unites data, process, and reporting with zero friction and zero licence bloat.
It’s not an imitation of the cloud.
It is the cloud — done intelligently, locally, and affordably.
So the $100-billion industry built on the phrase “Excel can’t do that” now faces a single, devastating truth:
Excel not only can — it already does.
And it does it for twelve dollars a month.
The miracle isn’t just technical.
It’s philosophical.
It shows how the world can stare at the same tool for decades — and never see what’s been in front of them all along.
Excel didn’t need saving.
It needed understanding.
And once you see it —
once you grasp the power of the Digital Librarian,
once you understand the simplicity of hub-and-spoke thinking,
once you see that the swamp was only ever a matter of perspective —
you can never unsee it.
That’s when you realise:
The miracle of Excel isn’t about cells or sheets.
It’s about vision.
It’s about the moment you stop painting purple squares
and start building the Taj Mahal.
That’s the real story.
That’s the revelation.
And that… is the Miracle of Excel.
Epilogue — The Miracle of Excel
[Soft instrumental underscore — warm piano, slow strings.]In every generation, there are tools that people take for granted.
Tools that sit quietly on every desk… until someone looks deeper.
Excel is one of those tools.
A miracle hiding in plain sight.
For decades, the world was told that Excel was small, fragile, outdated —
a relic of a simpler age.
But the truth was never about Excel’s limits.
It was about ours.
Because the moment you connect Excel to its Digital Librarian,
the moment you see data flowing freely across departments,
the moment you realise that this humble spreadsheet was always capable of enterprise power —
everything changes.
The swamp disappears.
The Taj Mahal appears.
And a new world opens up — built not on new software, but on new understanding.
This is not the end of Excel.
It’s the beginning of Excel’s renaissance.
Because now, we see it for what it truly is —
the most underestimated enterprise platform on Earth.
Written and presented by Hiran de Silva.
The Digital Librarian Series.
The Miracle of Excel.
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