How to give something as flexible as Excel that is not Excel?
I think that they'll gladly switch is a myth. From casual users I never heard "I sent you a spreadsheet", only "I sent you an Excel". And there is no incentive for them to get better educated in this regard.
> How to give something as flexible as Excel that is not Excel?
This is our problem; if we can't, then obviously Excel is the right tool for the job.
> I think that they'll gladly switch is a myth.
Ok, I think you're right. What I meant by "gladly" was more like "they won't be desperately trying to copy the data from the application to Excel and work the old way".
> Athere is no incentive for them to get better educated in this regard.
AKA. they won't change, because they have no reasonable reason too. So why do we (as developers) seem to expect them to?
Well, buried in your comment is the assumption that the alternative must be equally flexible, and I disagree.
Flexibility is often the cause of data loss at these companies, see "sorting a column but not the whole table" case for example.
People hate constraints, but constraints are exactly what we need to maintain data integrity. If convenience is more important, be my guest -- but I'll quit the moment they're asking me to fix an Excel table. (A bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.)
I think that they'll gladly switch is a myth. From casual users I never heard "I sent you a spreadsheet", only "I sent you an Excel". And there is no incentive for them to get better educated in this regard.