When you know Excel really well, it's like Legos for data. If you've got the imagination, intuition, and patience, you can make some incredible stuff.

Good Excel users think themselves better than a beginner. Great Excel users think themselves somewhere between Intermediate and Advanced. Excel Masters, and I know one who placed in that Excel data modeling competition, know they’re somewhere in the Intermediate to Advanced range.

This is one of my favorites to share. It's a 3D engine with raytracing with no VBA scripting - all of the calculations are done internally with spreadsheet math.

Used for the right purposes, Excel is an extremely versatile and powerful piece of software. Is use it all the time for analyzing complex financial data and turning pivot tables into really nice looking reports. I can use VBA behind the scenes to change report scenarios while preserving the formatting. Excel is great for things like that.

It's easy to get Into trouble though because eventually someone decides to keep a bunch of auxiliary -- yet somehow very important -- data in a spreadsheet. Before you know it, multiple people are being asked to maintain said data and then POOF! You now have a spreadsheet functioning as a database. It's all downhill from there.

Yeah, but it's the kind of black magic where you accidentally summon Cthulhu and only notice it, after he destroyed half of the city.