In the last office I worked in (mortgage processing place) they used Excel for everything and got no help from IT. One time I heard the general manager say 'I don't want to use Access, Joe Bloggs had everything running on Access a few years ago, and then he left, and then it broke, and nobody knew how to fix it.' In other words, Excel is a safe option because it's so ingrained and there's always Excel whizzes around.
Also, I never thought schools, PCs or technical manuals did an adequate job of explaining what the difference is between a spreadsheet and a database. Usually they just say 'database is for large amounts of data' but as we know businesses have enormous spreadsheets anyway. I'm not even sure how I would explain it without referring specifically to relational databases and saying something like 'think of a database as like a 3D spreadsheet...' and mumbling a lot
Also, I never thought schools, PCs or technical manuals did an adequate job of explaining what the difference is between a spreadsheet and a database. Usually they just say 'database is for large amounts of data' but as we know businesses have enormous spreadsheets anyway. I'm not even sure how I would explain it without referring specifically to relational databases and saying something like 'think of a database as like a 3D spreadsheet...' and mumbling a lot