A job tracker that has been running for eighteen months, with every fault a real one accumulates. Then the same information with types, rules, and one spelling per client.
The faults are the point
Nothing in the messy version is exaggerated for effect. Three spellings of one client, four date formats including “end of April”, a duplicated row, a merged cell that leaves a record with no reference, and a column called Notes2 that exists because somebody needed a second Notes column and nobody stopped them.
Each one is survivable on its own. Together they mean you cannot sort by date, cannot filter by client, and cannot answer “what is outstanding” without reading every row.
What the second version actually is
A SharePoint list. Not a database, not a custom application, and not a new subscription. On a Microsoft 365 licence you are already paying for, this costs nothing extra: no per-user fee, no server, nothing to run.
The difference that matters is the column type. A date column takes a date, so “end of May” is refused at the point of entry rather than discovered six months later. Try it in the demo above, the form will not accept it.
What this is not showing
The transformation is a button here and a morning’s work in reality. Deciding what the columns should be, agreeing one spelling per client, and working out which duplicate is current are judgement calls, and no tool makes them for you.
The reason to do it anyway is that the judgement is a one-off and the mess is permanent. If you have a spreadsheet in this state and are unsure whether it is worth moving, the signals that it has outgrown itself are worth reading first, and describing what it tracks and who touches it is usually enough to tell.