Hello all. I've been a member for 292 days and am only introducing myself.

I have used Excel for many years for parsing, cleaning and normalizing data for conversion to new databases systems and applications.
I use the formulas and VBA to reworked data through the use of elaborate formulas to reformat the data. I use excel for this because it is flexible and open. I can easily build formulas up and see the results immediately. When the chain of formulas are being tested I can scan the results and find test values and there by refine the conversion formulas so they may use in excel or be converted to external filter programs. Excel is not always the best for this as I sometimes have used spfpc for massive files. But even then I could easily build and test the conversion formula in excel and test it. I would them recode the statement and use it in the other app.