Posts filed under 'Excel'

Google Spreadsheets: After trying the beta

In my earlier post I argued why Google Spreadsheets is not a threat to Excel in any way or form. Now that I had chance to try it out myself, I’m more convinced than ever.

It’s actually barely usable for any serious kind of work (which is where most of the cash in Excel cash cow comes from):

  • No autofill – I unsuccessfully tried to drag a range (1, 2, 3 for example) down to fill out, say, 20-30 consecutive numbers. No luck. Ctrl-D/Ctrl-R shortcuts for copying right/down do work though.
  • No charts – Much less important than other things I’ve mentioned, but still a significant omission (Excel charts are not perfect by any measure though)
  • No offline access – One of great points mentioned by Ian Landsman

In my humble opinion, this is a case of just too much blogosphere hype with little real substance.

Update: iRows seems to be more useful, though less sleek than Google Spreadsheets: autofill, charts are included. And it supports collaborative editing to boot.

Add comment June 8th, 2006

Google Spreadsheets: Not really a threat to Excel

Vinny Carpenter takes a quick look at the just-launched Google Spreadsheets. Although some people think this is an Excel challenger. I, however, don’t think it’s a threat to Excel power base at all.

Although it’s well known that most of the time Excel is used for fairly basic tasks, most of the biggest users (consulting, corporate finance, investment banking) use a very wide subset of functions including:

  • External database queries
  • PivotTables (extremely important)
  • Large, complex spreadsheets (30+ sheets in a single workbook)

Which Google Spreadsheets is unlikely to offer in the short term (although I’m willing to be proven wrong). Most importantly, data that ends up in the spreadsheets is of confidential and/or proprietary nature and wouldn’t be on an online service.

That doesn’t mean that Google Spreadsheets won’t have its users, it’s just not a threat to most of the core Excel customers.

1 comment June 6th, 2006

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