Microsoft Excel is the bane of my existence.

I had an epiphany this past weekend. You know how you hear stories about battered women that can’t leave their abusive husbands for whatever reason? That’s like me and Microsoft Excel: no matter how many times Excel crashes on me or frustrates me, I can’t stop using it, because there’s simply no other alternative out there. (Another example is Evite, but to a lesser extent since I don’t have to use it every day, week, or even month.)

Where do I even begin with a list of grievances I have against Excel? I mean, it’s actually easy to begin that list…much harder to end it, though, so I’m just limiting myself to the following for now.

• Inexplicable crashes, especially while using Pivot Tables
• Annoying changes between PC versions that essentially make it unusable (especially between 2003 and 2007 versions)
• Copying and pasting in filtered lists have inconsistent behavior when you select non-adjacent cells (UGH)
• Those warnings for ignoring links…seriously? Who actually clicks on “edit links?”
• Mac versions suck even more than the PC versions (understandable, but doesn’t make it less sucky)

I would seriously like to have a conversation with the Excel Man about these issues. But probably not more than I would like to leave Microsoft Excel for good. And on that day I will shout and proclaim my freedom from the mountaintops.