The world's most popular database :(

Somewhere (probably on Joel on Software) I read that Microsoft Excel is the world's most popular database.

Well right now, I just wish it wasn't.

I'm in the middle of an incredibly tedious job that involves taking lots of data out of Excel spreadsheets and converting it into SDF format so that it can be imported into an Oracle RDBMS where it will be massaged and put into a new application database.

Phew.

Things that are annoying me

• Excel won't export to SDF properly natively. Luckily I found a VBA routine on MSDN that will do it for me.
• There doesn't appear to be a way to do a SELECT DISTINCT xxx INTO in Excel. Yeah, I know I shouldn't have to, but the advanced filter option in Open Office spreadsheet does.
• Open Office is buggy and crashes a lot.
  
• MS Access isn't much better than Excel at importing and exporting
• If you copy a spreadsheet from one workbook to another all the references are maintained to the first workbook even if the second workbook has identically named sheets. You have to then manually go through and delete the filename of the first workbook from all the formulae.
• VLOOKUP has a habit of returning '0' when the data returned is a blank
• When a sheet gets full-ish Excel has a nasty habit of displaying formulae rather than the result of formulae. Sometimes you can just hit enter and it will display the results, other times you have to delete it and type it again.

The worst thing is, I'm ready to bet that the data was originally in some RDBMS before it was exported and imported into Excel and 'cleaned up' ready for me to process.

Here endeth the whinge.