I thought Works was mostly for word processing. It's what my dad used a long time ago, before we introduced him to and helped him learn Word. I didn't know it had spreadsheet capabilities. Is it like setting up tables in Word? I would think it would be limited in choices of functions, since it's a combo pack... word processing, spreadsheets, data mgmt, +, but you can share spreadsheets between Works and Excel. I know that much. Even if you couldn't, you should be able to import most anything they've done into Excel (tab delimited, etc.). Not that I've ever done it...
Who could possibly put anything over Excel? I was so glad when it came out. I learned on Lotus 1-2-3 --- uck! I'll never go back... never!