One difference between your experiences as an educator and the parent's experiences as an Office Excel Guy is that educators have a position of authority, and there is generally an ethos of paying attention and trying to remember what they're telling you!

^ This. Office Excel Guy is just glorified IT help desk. People don't want an explanation, don't want to learn how to use excel necessarily. They want want to push one button, and get a result. Spend longer than 5 minutes explaining it and you will be told you're wasting their time.

You spend time explaining on what is essentially deaf ears, and being on call all the time

Educators tend to have alignment on students' skill levels too, and perhaps not so with "Excel support." It's actually easier to help someone who knows nothing about the subject. What I struggled in the past are those who think they know what they are doing, yet require help in narrower scope.

They often have often accumulated bad habit, and won't listen to you because "I have been doing this way for years."

Also, it's interesting to observe that many who struggle in Excel (or many of "consumer" applications) actually are struggling in basic computing skills. (e.g. can't tell difference between left and right mouse buttons, don't know how to copy files, etc.) It often result in infuriated people, pointing out that they need to learn basics of the operating system.

This is a reasonable approach for someone whose primary role is educating others.

It rapidly recedes from the realm of reasonable considerations once we're talking about someone providing informal Excel support to colleagues as an extracurricular activity.

I disagree. You tell them how to do it. You ensure they have no questions. You have them show you that they know how.

Then you destroy their work area with a hammer when they come back for more help on the same thing. (obviously humor)

It's just like teaching.

Source: I'm the 'excel guy' in my service area. I tell them I'll show you twice and I'll make sure you don't have any questions. Then I'll show you youtube videos. I'm not in the business of 'doing' for anyone.

There’s a clear trade off in terms of time and annoyance, and getting good at teaching or communicating with different people.

Being able to share mastery is a key part of being a master at a subject, which is a political and image advantage.

I used my excel ability to learn how to best explain vlookup and got good at it.

I did get taken advantage of early on, but I learnt how to deal with those specific types of users, and not do their work for them.

In contrast to those people, there are others who genuinely respect you for your help, and then use your training to make their life and yours better.

Not to mention, many excel problems are not that hard. If you know what you are doing, it’s an easy win/goodwill for you, and a major problem for someone else solved.

In my experience it's less that people don't grasp it and more that they have no interest in learning and hope to survive as parasites forever. I've worked with people who will try to stop you from teaching them almost immediately and interrupt with some nonsense that amounts to "can you just do it for me, though?". A lot of the time this happens when the task is time-sensitive and they're likely afraid of missing a deadline by trying to figure something out themselves, but you'd think they would recognize the pattern after showing up with the same frantic plea enough times.

You can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn. Most people in this situation don't want to learn and actively tune you out. They just want you to fix their problem and if they have another problem (or the same problem again), they'll just call you over to fix it again.