If you're an Excel user (or any other spreadsheet, really), adapting to learn R can be hard. As this blog post by Gordon Shotwell explains, one of the reasons is that simple things can be harder to do in R than Excel. But it's worth perservering, because complex things can be easier.
While Excel (ahem) excels at things like arithmetic and tabulations (and some complex things too, like presentation), R's programmatic focus introduces concepts like data structures, iteration, and functions. Once you've made the investment in learning R, these abstractions make reducing complex tasks into discrete steps possible, and automating repeated similar tasks much easier. For the full, compelling argument, follow the link to the Yhat blog, below.
Yhat blog: R for Excel Users