i've seen many attempts to turn a widely used spreadsheet into a webapp. Eventually, it becomes an attempt to re-implement spreadsheets. The first time something changes and the user says "well in Excel i would just do this..." the dev team is off chasing existing features of excel for eternity and the users are pissed because it takes so long and is buggy, meanwhile, excel is right there ready and waiting.
I always see this point mentioned in "App VS Spreadsheet" but no one gives a concrete example. The whole point of using a "purpose" build app is to give some structure and consistency to the problem. If people are replicating spreadsheet feature then they needed "excel" to begin with since that is a purpose built tool for generalizing a lot of problems. It's like I can say well my notebook and pen is already in front of me, I can use this why would I ever bother opening an app? well because the app provides some additional value.
