About tables, do they work when you automate the data entry part? For example, copy from a speadsheet into your spreadsheet with the first macro, and then transform the data with a second? That's 90% of my use case for Excel. (I know that doing this in Python/whatever would be "better" but I have to distribute this to users, and the only thing they have on their computer is Excel, and they're gonna manipulate the data after in Excel anyways).
I think Libreoffice Calc supports python integration. Maybe that way one could have the best of both worlds. Unfortunately I suppose most users are stuck in the MS garden.
