Excel as a user tool
Most complex business processes done in Excel would be better done in MS Access. However my clients have mostly not been computer literate enough to do these in a database. Excel is quite a good tool for business people to prototype what they want before I come along and turn it into a database.
MS Access is pretty easy to use but there are plenty of hurdles that the Excel user finds too challenging. If MS did some really good development work on the Access user interface Excel users could be creating competent business specific database applications.
I suspect there is a conspiracy against such a thing. Years ago Lotus had Lotus Notes which was a far better database generator that allowed the boss's personal assistant to knock up a database application in the morning and have data coming back by the afternoon from those emailed the link. That was 25 years ago but they killed Notes and replaced it with MS Office.
The contemporary equivalent of that is the secretary creates a spreadsheet template and emails it to people asking them to send it back filled in. She will then use copy and paste to merge these individual sheets into her main one. A time consuming and error prone task when the users can add and delete columns to their liking.