I think you might be thinking of databases… Access (barf), not Excel.

I do think databases and tables are a useful thing but most database systems require over-specifying fields via esoteric “column types” while spreadsheets underspecify them via formatting (and extremely limited formatting at that)

Some happy medium must exist out there, but I haven’t seen it. Notion and Google Docs (Format /Convert to Table) approach this but don’t quite get there.