Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, VBA is a break away from the nice purely functional world of spreadsheets. Simon Peyton Jones once did some work on giving Excel more programmatic power without having to go to VBA. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...
The paper deals with more examples of calculations: convert fahrenheit to celcius, calculate volume. It does not cover interactive applications. I hope you are not redefining the problem to fit the solution which can be a weakness of pure mathematicians and functional programmers (and negative though it is I have to add: Its a waste of everybody's time. It would be much better if people were direct about what their s…
Excel is very interactive: you can change input and immediately get a different output. (I think you were trying to talk about a different restriction. Excel is very limited in the kinds of inputs and outputs you can make, and even more so in the kind of side-effects you can cause.)