Hmm... deleting my previous questions about the COVID test figures snaffu as they seem to have been answered from other sources.

It seems the problem was creaking old public sector IT that Public Health England developed long before the current pandemic. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54422505

Contrary to popular myth, the COVID test figures snaffu was not down to the limitations of Microsoft Excel.

It was the result of an ancient scripted process using XLT templates to dump data into XLS files. The legacy XLS format has limitations that XLSX does not.

For those complaining about the use of Excel in general, it's worth remembering that even in this day and age spreadsheets are a swiss army knife of functionality.

If you don't appreciate the utility of Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc or Apple Sheets then you need to upskill.

Also, if you believe anything the Daily Mail says about anything tech-related then you deserve to look silly!

I am intrigued to know where the "opening a CSV file hit the maximum row limit" story came from. Particularly given number of confirmed cases is well below that.

El Reg has a much better summary of what I've said in this thread: https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/