SharePoint lists and tables work very well with Access and Excel. Linking them all together is trivial but appears to others as if youve created a magic kingdom of data. Ive gotten far in my career using these oft laughed at tools.
I do agree, but they do have their limitations. Can't update sharepoint lists from Excel if you have more than 5000 records, can't update sharepoint lists generally unless you use VBA hacks (or use REST API and somehow get VBA to authenticate). I'm not certain whether you can update in bulk using access honestly, I'd be interested in knowing though... Even using REST API has it's own limitations.
Generally I update them with client-ran JavaScript. I love sharepoint lists for their ease of use to users, but the limitations are pretty rubbish if ever you want to do anything programatically, unless you can figure out how to authenticate (and/or use a library which handles that for you).
