Excel 的持久主导地位与其规模和经济数据密切相关。其用户量约 5 亿付费者，推动微软 2025 年来自企业的 Microsoft 365 收入达 880 亿美元、来自消费者的收入 70 亿美元。Excel 生态包括数百万订阅者的网红频道、约 70 万人的 Reddit 社群与一年一度的电竞式世界锦标赛，展示其高度黏性。尽管存在早期竞品如 Lotus 1-2-3、后来出现的 Google Sheets 与新兴 AI 挑战者，但 Sheets 仅复制“99% 功能给 99% 用户”，而大多数 AI 工具仍建立在 Excel 上，体现替代难度。微软季度商业收入同比增长 17%，消费收入增长 28%，显示需求持续扩张。

纵观 40 年历史，Excel 的普及源于一系列技术与商业策略：从 1980 年代智能重算技术带来 10 倍速度优势，到图形界面提高可用性，再到 Office 打包策略以两款价格出售三款软件，有效锁定企业与学校。功能扩展包括数据清洗工具 Power Query、使用者自定义函数 LAMBDA，以及由 Lotus 借鉴而来的数据透视表，使复杂数据分析门槛大幅降低。Excel 同时渗透政府、军方、金融业与家庭用途，例如美国国防部门购买 200 万份许可证，进一步强化其结构性地位。

尽管 AI 承诺自动洞察分析，但模型常在基础计算上失误，且无法展示推导过程，使人工数据处理仍被视为必要。专业人士强调，手动分析有助于真正吸收信息。Excel 既代表企业单调劳动，也成为个人创造与掌控的空间。无论用户是用它制作预算、分析通话时长、规划行程或构建投资模型，其核心吸引力在于可无限加深的功能层级。即便意见领袖宣称若有更好工具会立即转移，Excel 当前仍是“实际工作发生之处”。

Excel’s durability is tied to measurable scale and economics. With an estimated 500 million paying users, it underpins Microsoft’s 2025 Microsoft 365 revenue of $88 billion from businesses and $7 billion from consumers. Its ecosystem includes influencer channels with millions of subscribers, a 700,000-member Reddit community, and an annual e-sports-style world championship, reflecting deep engagement. Although earlier rivals such as Lotus 1-2-3, later entrants like Google Sheets, and emerging AI challengers have gained traction, Sheets merely replicates “99% of the functionality for 99% of users,” while most AI tools still build atop Excel. Quarterly commercial revenue rose 17% and consumer revenue 28%, confirming persistent demand.

Over its 40-year history, Excel’s adoption resulted from specific technical and commercial strategies: intelligent recalculation offering roughly 10× speed gains in the 1980s, a graphical interface that simplified usage, and Office bundling that sold three apps for the price of two, locking in corporations and schools. Functional expansion—including Power Query, user-defined LAMBDA formulas, and pivot tables borrowed from Lotus—lowered barriers to advanced analysis. Excel now permeates government, defense, finance, and households; the U.S. Department of War alone licenses 2 million Microsoft 365 seats, reinforcing Excel’s structural centrality.

Although AI promises instant analytical insight, models often fail at basic arithmetic and cannot show their reasoning, preserving the need for human-directed processing. Practitioners emphasize that manual analysis aids comprehension. Excel represents both monotony and autonomy in modern work. Whether used for budgeting, call-time analysis, travel planning, or investment modeling, its appeal lies in infinite depth. Even advocates who claim they would switch tools immediately acknowledge that, at present, Excel remains “where actual work happens.”