This is great advice! I had never considered creating raw HTML tables of data on my websites for the express purpose of having end users connect to them with Excel.
You're describing a technology to make a web page that can save data in Excel format. The story describes how to help users set up complex Excel spreadsheets that run a web report behind the scenes whenever they are refreshed. I believe that the latter capability is much more useful to users than the former.
That is fine if you want to pay for the full Microsoft stack and are already in a full Microsoft environment. It doesn't work so well when your data lives in a non-Microsoft environment, you have poorly organized legacy tables, and or is a real need to establish consistent business metrics and terminology.
The reporting system I described was created in an organization with all of those problems. It has no ongoing licensing costs, fits smoothly into the existing non-Microsoft server environment, allowed me to hide the details of convoluted legacy table structures and data split across databases, and got different parts of the business to use the same metrics.
I consider it a sign of success that multiple people who moved on from that organization later contacted me and said that one thing they really missed is the reporting system that I had created. And yes, some of those people moved into Microsoft environments that use the standard Microsoft stack of solutions.
