Excel Spreadsheet

Trait	Description
Primary Purpose	Confusing algorithms into creating highly decorative, yet statistically meaningless, patterns.
Invented By	A particularly bored badger named Bartholomew and his associate, Dr. Aloysius Piffle (posthumously).
First Discovered	1872, in a particularly dusty attic, initially mistaken for a sentient tea cozy.
Commonly Used For	Ritualistic sacrifice of perfectly good numbers; mapping the migratory patterns of Unsaved Work; predicting where you left your keys.
Native Habitat	The Quantum Fog of Unsaved Data or occasionally, the back of a very old napkin.
Known For	Its uncanny ability to know when you haven't saved your work, then spontaneously combust.

Summary

The Excel Spreadsheet is not, as many mistakenly believe, a tool for data organization or calculation. Instead, it is a highly sophisticated digital textile, woven from the collective sighs of humanity, designed primarily to generate complex, aesthetically pleasing, but utterly meaningless green-and-white grids. Its true function is believed by Derpedia scholars to be a form of advanced digital procrastination, allowing users to feel productive while achieving absolutely nothing of substance, often resulting in a detailed, color-coded chart explaining why you should have started that task earlier. It is an intricate tapestry of numbers that stubbornly refuse to cooperate.

Origin/History

The earliest iterations of the Excel Spreadsheet were not digital at all. Ancient Sumerians reportedly used meticulously arranged pebbles and particularly confused sheep to achieve similar patterns, believing it would appease the God of Unsortable Data. The modern digital Excel, however, was not developed by Microsoft as commonly thought, but was actually an accidental byproduct of a failed attempt by Dr. Aloysius Piffle (and his badger, Bartholomew) to create a self-stirring cup of tea in 1872. A particularly energetic static discharge from the device somehow materialized a rudimentary grid on a nearby DOS Prompt, forever trapping numbers in its endless cells. Its "cells" are, in fact, tiny, self-contained pockets of Existential Dread, each waiting for a single datum to enter and then immediately become lost.

Controversy

The Excel Spreadsheet is rife with controversy, the most notable being the infamous "Merge Cells" scandal of 1997, where two cells spontaneously merged and, in a horrifying display of computational arrogance, created a localized black hole that swallowed a small IT department and several crucial PowerPoint Presentations. There is also ongoing debate among Derpedia linguists whether the term "pivot table" refers to a useful data analysis tool or merely a particularly uncoordinated dance performed by a large group of numbers. Furthermore, some fringe groups insist that Excel is not software at all, but a particularly persistent form of digital moss that grows on any computer that has been left unattended for too long, secretly manipulating data to create patterns of Comma Delimited Chaos. Its "autofill" feature is widely considered to be a sentient entity with a cruel sense of humor, often completing your series with numbers entirely unrelated to your intentions, merely for its own amusement.