Consider discussing Google Sheets.

[iangow]

I loathe Excel, but I love Google Sheets. (If there are alternatives to Google Sheets, please forgive my ignorance.) I wonder if some discussion of alternatives to Excel like Google Sheets has a place here.

Benefits of Google Sheets:

1. With distributed data entry, version control issues go away. These are huge in my experience.
2. One can monitor data entry in real-time. "Please don't put values like 2013-03-23 (need to check) in the date column."
3. Adding data validation on the fly is easy. (I think a reason why we often use spreadsheets is because we don't know what data we want to collect in advance. It's common to add columns, etc. So the idea of setting up a nice Excel spreadsheet with data validation, etc., before starting data entry is often not possible in practice.)
4. Multiple people can enter data at once. (Alternative of different people having different Excel files is painful to even mention.)
5. Data import is easy. Use googlesheets package from Jenny Bryan.
6. Data access can be added and removed with ease.
7. Access to data is continuous. No need for "please send me the updated spreadsheet before you go home today, as I'd like to run some numbers."
8. Google Sheets has some functions (e.g., regular expression support) that can facilitate data entry.
9. Data access is ensured. Some Excel spreadsheets I "have" are somewhere on the now-erased computers of long-departed research assistants of colleagues (i.e., gone). Google Sheets documents can always be found (putting the key in code also makes it easier to find them than C:/Desktop/Best Project Ever/data collection_final_v3_3-4-1997.xls does with Excel files).
10. I haven't had encoding issues with Google Sheets.

[iangow]

But note some weaknesses:

1. One needs internet access in general.
2. Sometimes Google mimicks behaviour of Excel. Like Excel (see #3), Google Sheets can mangle CSVs too.

(At least it handles the non-Roman script.)