Excel spreadsheets are fantastic bits of kit, but databases are not. Rather than making the full jump to replacing Excel with a database system, there is a halfway house you can consider.

Convert Excel (.xlsx) files to pipe-delimited TXT files, automatically mapping columns and order to an existing SQL Server table structure. Ideal for legacy system integration, automated data imports, ...

If you've have lots of data and lots of analysis to do, but little time or skill, you need Excel's Power Pivot feature. Here's how to get started with it.