By Hiran de Silva There is something almost comical—if it weren’t so damaging—about the Excel education industry today. Scroll through YouTube. Sign up for a...

By Hiran de Silva Most Excel teaching follows a predictable pattern. Here’s a button.Here’s a checkbox.Here’s a formula.Press this, tick that, watch what happens. It’s a...

By Hiran de Silva Good evening everyone.Today I want to ask a question that sounds simple, but might change the way you see Excel forever. What is Basic Excel, and what...

By Hiran de Silva For more than two decades, a falsehood has been repeated across boardrooms, sales presentations, and webinars: “You can’t consolidate bottom-up with...

By Hiran de Silva For too long, Excel has been misunderstood. ERP vendors call it Excel Hell.Cloud startups promise to replace it.Even some Excel influencers quietly...

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...

By Hiran de Silva Here is some research done by ChatGPT in November 2025. It’s interesting how the rhetoric has moved in the past few years – from ‘get...

By Hiran de Silva In every organization, there’s a spreadsheet specialist — the go-to person when something urgent, messy, or mission-critical needs fixing in Excel...

By Hiran de Silva The Literal Direction vs. The Lateral Explanation A story about how we learn, who we trust, and why so many of us end up in the swamp. A tourist stands...

This is the companion demonstration to our earlier explainer on the historical background of Excel and databases.It follows naturally from the QCA Audit case study —...