Some time ago, I created a spreadsheet migration tool for a client of mine at the time. I was heavily criticised by my then employers for venturing outside of our agreed scope.
The tool essentially accepts data input into one sheet (each field occupying a column; each record occupying a row), and spits it out in a pre-defined, fixed-width format (padding each field with the necessary number of spaces), ready for a downstream application to feed off its goodness.
It wasn't the most strategic tool ever created, but it worked beautifully. It was heartening to find out yesterday that the same tool is being used to this day to migrate data into the application. I'm sure some of the official deliverables are now shelfware.
