Productivity Hacks — Part III (Why Google Sheets are better than Excel)

Caution: Polarising topic - I'm a huge supporter of Google Sheets

— What do you prefer?

Google Sheets or Excel?

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Content

Part I - Gmail & Slack

Part II - Phone & Trello

Part III - Google Sheets > Excel

• The Obvious Reasons
• Why people don't switch
• WHY GOOGLE SHEETS > EXCEL
• Cons

Part IV - Quality enhancing Productivity Tools

Part V - Speed enhancing Productivity Tools

Google Sheets

The Obvious Reasons

I'd usually start a conversation of Google Sheets vs Excel with "don't even get me started", but... well... now I've actually started. Let me give you the obvious arguments of why Google Sheets are better. Each one of the below arguments is reason enough by itself to switch:

1) Real-time Collaboration

- seriously, this is huge, you don't even need to keep on reading

I don't understand how people still use Excel and struggle with version control! Huge risk of losing data and hours over hours of work by two people working on separate files. Renaming files, clashing uploads, not realising you're overwriting someone else's work, sending files per email or storing on the internal drive etc. etc. This is just so outdated and old school.

2) Cost

- if collaboration didn't convince you this one has to - Google Sheets is FREE

You literally save hundreds of dollars.

No need to buy anything.

No need to install anything.

No need for license keys.

- all you need is internet!

3) Updates

- yep, Google Sheets constantly introduces new stuff

Excel is static. Once you've installed it, it will stay the same forever until you install another update 20 years later.

Google Sheets updates all the time.

4) Apple

- Excel is super slow on Macs...

At least the versions I've seen so far - don't know about the newer ones, but I have never heard of anyone not struggling with Excel on Macs. It's slow, recalculates forever and crashes... everything software shouldn't do.

Why people don't switch

Whenever people switch to organisations where Google Sheets are used (usually startups), they are reluctant to switch. I get it, I was the same.

You're a Pro at Excel and now someone tells you to relearn everything you know. Why don't people want to switch?

• Fear - afraid of change, new stuff, and it not being as good
• Slower - everyone's always in a rush, why switch if initially it will slow you down
• Looking like a Noob - going from Pro to Noob is uncomfortable, especially if you just started with an organisation
• Shortcuts - "I'm so good with shortcuts, none of them work, I can't work without my shortcuts"

It's all totally understandable, nobody wants to look like a noob and waste time. It's worth it - let me show you why (apart from all the obvious reasons).

WHY GOOGLE SHEETS > EXCEL

These are the Top 5 reasons why I prefer Google Sheets, which are often unknown to Excel users.

1) Version Control

Excel - How often have you saved _final.xls, _finallyfinal.xls, _realfinal.xls files and how often have you lost your latest progress?

Google Sheets - constant autosaving, full version control, revert back to an old version any time, never lose anything

2) Comments

Commenting, replying to comments, assigning tasks, collaboration --> you can do all of that on Google Sheets

You're basically having a conversation --> the thing which human society is built on (BIG FAT NO IN EXCEL, where you have to send the file back and forth)

3) Meetings - Pro Tip

A usual call of two analysts discussing an Excel file over the phone goes something like this:

"The mistake is in sheet XXX in cell X15" [5 second wait]

"Oh yeah, but it really refers to sheet ZZZ in cell Z105" [5 second wait]

"Hmm wait I can't find it... where is it again?"

In Google Sheets there are two things:

1. You can see in real time what the other person is doing and looking at
2. Pro Tip: Click on the person's icon at the top right and it automatically takes you to where the person is, no matter how vast the Google Sheet is

4) Formulas

This is actually one of the main reasons, why I love Google Sheets. It's got a couple of formulas, which Excel doesn't have and really needs. Two of my favourites are both formulas which make data processing flexible, rather than static like in Excel.

=transpose() & = unique()

Both formulas do what the name implies They take a range of data (which you can keep changing and expanding) and filter it + return the unique values / transpose the data.

To me this embodies the flexibility of Google Sheets - these two formulas are especially useful when you want to make flexible models, where the categories/buckets keep changing. In Excel you would need to write a Macro to solve this problem.

5) Extensions

As Google Sheets is in your browser, you can easily plug in new integrations. Excel does that too, but you need to download and then install it into Excel and they are offline. Two integrations which I wanted to highlight though and make a real difference are:

a) PowerTools

This integration basically upgrades your Google Sheets with more features. Some of my favourites:

• capitalise, lowercase, uppercase every word in a cell
• Unmerge all selected cells - rather than doing it one by one
• Function by cell colour
• Split values based on whichever rules you want

b) Zapier

Zapier shoots Google Excel into a completely different orbit than Excel. It allows you to make Google Sheets an input, output tool or even the brain behind a full program/function/operation, which ties in with any of the hundreds of other online tools. Integrate Google Sheets with web merges, Gmail, Eventbrite, Hubspot - basically any online tool that you can think of.

You can make If This Then That commands, making it the trigger or pushing data into it if something else is triggered. The possibilities are endless. There's now even software out there which allows you to create and manage Mobile Apps built on Google Sheets.

Cons

Of course, there are also plenty of cons and some cases which Excel is better at.

1) Security

One of the biggest ones might be security as it's relatively "harder" to share an Excel file mistakenly than sharing a Google Sheets link with the wrong person. Saying that you first need to change the settings to allow "people outside the organisation" to view/edit - so there's a safety step here too to prevent this from happening.

2) Internet

Yes - you need internet to run Google Sheets. To be fair - you can also use it Offline and sync it afterwards, but you're running in the same version control issues as Excel.

Last Words

I'm curious to hear more opinions. I haven't used Excel in a long time and I'm aware there would have been some changes in the meantime. For example, there's apparently a collaboration feature now - even though I've never seen anyone use it.

In sum - I love the simplicity and collaboration powers of Google Sheets and even though I had to relearn all shortcuts it was totally worth it! Give it a go :)