Sure! Basically, certain formulas in excel affect more than one cell. For example, there is a function called “sequence”. “=SEQUENCE(5)” puts a 1 in the cell where it is, a 2 in the cell below, 3 below that etc. up to 5. I.e. it “spills” out of its cell.
I mostly use this feature when A) designing spreadsheets where I need to update the number of rows of data during operation, or where the number of rows is truly dynamic (a real example is a sheet that goes through my asset purchases and bundles them into buy-sell chunks for tax) B) Where I want to do anything with filters that excel doesn’t have by default - since one of the spill-enabled functions is “FILTER”
I know the ‘right’ way to perform these tasks is with an actual programming language but I want to be able to share these sheets with others and have them be vaguely happy to have them.
Seems like you’ve got a lot of distro recommendations haha which is good - go for one of those and you should be ok (I’m on mint for the record). My suggestion if you have a bit if extra money and less time is to buy a prebuilt system with linux already installed, tuxedo and system76 are two big names but I can’t comment on what to go with there.
However the advantage with buying an integrated system like that is that the hardware is all guaranteed and you can ring them for support if needed.
My other suggestion is to BACKUP your files!