# Microsoft Excel 339 Hacker News commenters recommended Microsoft Excel and 292 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 30 years (12 owners). **Verdict:** The business-standard spreadsheet that lets non-programmers build real tools fast, with powerful array formulas and stable shortcuts, though it is error-prone, can feel sluggish, and messy when shared. ## Why people recommend it - Empowers non-programmers to build tools (8 comments): "more powerful, more easily used by the people who have the domain knowledge required to properly implement calculations or workflow" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46196982)) "When it comes to empowering, I am not sure much beats Excel. It lets non techy people codify amazing things and get real work done." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48919656)) "Excel has been around democratizing programming for the businesses of any kind and people of any kind and created a lot of value" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980357)) - Industry standard with no alternative (6 comments): "If you need compatibility and more advanced features, or your whole company runs on excel like a financial corp - there's no alternative." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46575094)) "With its integrations and Turing completeness, unlike word processing or presentation- if it requires excel you just need to use excel." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46213393)) "If you're only ever going to learn exactly one spreadsheet app in your life, Excel is the one you probably want to learn" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160162)) - Quick to build working solutions (3 comments): "By the time it takes to make a custom filtered table non extensible UI for an api, the excel guy is finished three times over" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49854084)) "Obviously with excel, if you make a mistake you just correct it and excel automatically recalculates everything instantly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46421639)) "I can set up a "data integration" in 3 hours that has a highly customizable and (relatively) bug-free front-end" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46161296)) - Powerful lookup and array functions (3 comments): "XLOOKUP is so nice though. The other stuff I can live without, especially the UI on data connections changing all the time and the connections breaking anyway." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202984)) "the replacement of the calculation engine with an array first engine with spill, and array functions was even more powerful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49859729)) "This looks like a very sane implementation, addresses some issues with traditional arrays (while extending them nicely)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852320)) ## What people warn about - Few guardrails against user mistakes (4 comments): "People worry when very important things are done with Excel because it has practically no mechanisms guiding the user toward avoiding mistakes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49871203)) "an inadvertent click+drag can move data between cells, and since the cells are uniform it's hard to see that anything unintended happened" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47833186)) "Excel still automatically converts random things into dates (the "ability" to turn it off they added a few years ago only works half the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927767)) - Unwanted automatic type and date conversion (2 comments): "Excel still automatically converts random things into dates (the "ability" to turn it off they added a few years ago only works half the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927767)) "It's completely Excel's fault for pushing their type-inference and making it difficult for users to define or supply their own." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47857707)) - Shared spreadsheets become chaotic (3 comments): "A single spreadsheet used locally is probably the best imaginable tool for answering "what if I changed that." That same sheet shared across an organization suddenly becomes a game of "what caused that change."" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47580041)) "He couldn't select information to send it to somebody who wanted it, because it was trying to do a collaborative spreadsheet thing and had got itself locked up somehow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50224283)) "It was a total shit show of undocumented pseudo APIs with zero change management or version control but it worked somehow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46339696)) - Sluggish with annoying delays (2 comments): "excel is amazing software but if your laptop is not in airplane mode, the number of little delays that creep in is wild" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48677999)) "a super fast native spreadsheet that is NOT Excel. Kinda like a combination of Excel, TUI, and MS Access in one. Fast like Numbers.app, not sluggish like Excel is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47084712)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Google Sheets](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-sheets.md): 92 recommend - [Lotus 1-2-3](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lotus-1-2-3.md): 34 recommend - [LibreOffice Calc](https://hackerapproved.com/p/libreoffice-calc.md): 32 recommend - [Numbers by Apple](https://hackerapproved.com/p/numbers.md): 27 recommend - [cell terminal spreadsheet editor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/terminal-spreadsheet-editor-with-vim-keybindings.md): 12 recommend ## Where to get it - [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Microsoft+Excel&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link) - [Official site](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Microsoft Excel", https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-excel/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).