The thing is, it can be done by a "non programmer" without IT or admin overhead. Building or buying a new solution outside of Office requires far more buy-in and cost.

It may not be the best workflow, but it is the most accessible one for an individual to start with.

Edit: for what it's worth, I agree that it can be a hindrance to a company when it becomes a core operating process. However, that doesn't mean that it is inherently wrong for many needs

Sure, I get where it comes into play. A team usually has the "techie" guy who decides to roll some macros, and soon it becomes embedded. In the last decade and before this was the engine of an enormous amount of end user computing.

But in 2017, it is almost always a very bad sign. Which is why the competition have mostly abandoned automation of the 1990s Office sort.

What is a "better" solution? If a macro-programmed office document is doing its job, what constitutes "better"?

Why scarequote better twice? It is possible, you understand, for some solutions to be better than others.

In 2017 there are shockingly few cases where macro programming an Office document is an ideal solution, and it is usually a really clear sign that you're approaching the problem wrong. It was seldom a good solution even in 2010.

It's funny that in these conversations people always bring up finance. I work in finance, for a wide variety of companies making a wide variety of solutions. Excel automation is a curse. Every Excel automation is an abomination from a decade plus earlier -- islands of data, extraordinarily full of errors, security nightmares, data exposure risks, and on and on.

This. I don't think those automated Excel spreadsheets are doing as great a job as people think. Every time I've been brought in to try and migrate people away from these kind of solutions, we've exposed many bugs. Some not a big deal, others costing the company real money.