We'll say it plainly: a spreadsheet app that deletes your work without warning is not a tool you can trust, and trust is the foundation of any data workflow. This user's experience, borders vanishing, blocks of cells disappearing at random, isn't just a frustration; it's a fundamental failure of reliability. When you're editing on the go, the last thing you should need is a backup plan for every single change. Version history is a safety net, not a workflow.
What this tells us is that the mobile spreadsheet experience, for many users, remains trapped in a legacy of fragility. The user here is doing everything right: updated apps, a modern device, cloud sync. Yet the app still behaves unpredictably. That's not a bug report, it's a signal. It says that the underlying architecture of how we interact with data on mobile is still built on assumptions from the desktop era. You shouldn't have to wonder if tapping "edit" will cost you hours of formatting work. The tool should be invisible; it should serve the task, not create new ones.
The practical takeaway for anyone reading this is clear: if you rely on spreadsheets for real work, test your mobile workflow before you need it. Open a copy, make edits, check version history. Find out if your app is a partner or a liability. But more importantly, this story should push you to ask a bigger question. Why are we still accepting that a tool as mature as Excel behaves this way on a flagship phone? The answer is that mobile spreadsheet apps have been treated as scaled-down afterthoughts rather than first-class environments. That's not progress. That's a gap waiting to be filled by something built for how people actually work today.
This user's frustration is a canary. It points to a real need for tools that respect your data integrity regardless of device, that understand context and intent rather than just executing commands. The solution isn't better version history, it's software that doesn't need a history to undo its own mistakes. Until that becomes the standard, the most productive thing you can do is choose tools that treat your work as sacred, not as something to be recovered.