There's no shame in admitting you've spent an afternoon wrestling with a stubborn CSV file, but there's a limit to how long that should feel like progress. The original poster's frustration is familiar to anyone who's ever stared down a bank export or a third-party tool's messy output, and it points to a truth we don't say enough: manual cleanup is not a skill, it's a tax on your time. The real issue isn't that the data is messy, it's that we keep treating the symptom instead of the system that produces it.
What stands out in this story is the gap between knowing and doing. The poster has tried Power Query and scripts, but still hits edge cases that break the flow. That's not a personal failing; it's the natural result of building one-off fixes for a recurring problem. You can't script your way out of inconsistency if you're still thinking in terms of individual files rather than repeatable patterns. The moment you shift from "how do I clean this file" to "how do I standardize the process for any file like this," you stop fighting the data and start designing for it. That's the practical takeaway here: the goal isn't to eliminate every edge case, it's to make the common ones invisible.
For the reader, this means looking at your own repetitive tasks with fresh eyes. If you're still fixing column names or date formats by hand because "it's faster," ask yourself if that's actually true over a month, a quarter, or a year. The poster's experience with Power Query and scripts shows that partial automation isn't enough; you need a system that handles the messy middle without constant babysitting. That might mean investing in a tool that learns from your corrections, or it might mean building a small library of reusable transformations that you trust. Either way, the answer isn't to try harder with the same manual mindset.
The most telling line is the closing question: "what's a repetitive data task you still do manually even though you know it shouldn't be?" That's the real invitation. It's not about shaming anyone for not having automated everything; it's about recognizing that the pain is shared and the solutions are out there. So here's our concrete point: stop treating your manual fixes as a personal quirk and start treating them as a signal. Every time you catch yourself doing the same cleanup twice, that's a workflow worth questioning. The future of spreadsheets isn't about doing the same thing faster; it's about making the boring parts disappear.