Just passing through... caught your message. Sounds very familiar! I used to love 123 and Word Perfect. I had a hard time giving them up and finally had to give in to Word and Excel. Excel is definitely phenomenal, and I don't think I even remember the keystrokes with 123. They're like distant memories. And I felt the same way about Microsoft products as you did. We sold out, didn't we? LOL. I guess it just took a while, but they finally lured us in and we, still sometimes kicking and screaming, like 'em.
As for 'data labels'... you're talking about Excel charts? Great chart maker in Excel. You create your labels and data, highlight it, then hit F11 and you have a chart.