Spreadsheet programs in your sights: Google Sheets as an Excel alternative

Spreadsheet programs are indispensable tools for daily work with data in business and science. For decades, Microsoft Excel has established itself as a quasi-standard and many users only know this one spreadsheet program. However, Google Sheets is a powerful alternative that is optimized for modern online work. In this article we will compare Google Sheets and Excel to find out which of the two spreadsheet programs is better for you.

Microsoft Excel as part of the Office 365 suite is the default option for most offices and businesses. But there are significantly more spreadsheet programs on the market. The fact that Excel is familiar to most users these days is due to its long history. Microsoft Excel, the successor to the earlier Multiplan software, first appeared in 1985, back then already as a graphical spreadsheet and initially only for Apple macOS and only later for Microsoft Windows.

Like most spreadsheet programs, Excel also supports complex calculations with formulas, functions and linked data sets. It is therefore suitable for commercial and statistical, as well as other mathematical and scientific tasks.

Possibilities and limitations of Excel Online

However, the full-blown Excel as an application for Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, as it is known today, was primarily designed as a program for individual users for many years. Functions for collaborative team work have only been added by Microsoft in the recent past with the ever deeper integration into Office 365 - now renamed Microsoft 365 Apps.

Microsoft has also added apps for the mobile platforms Apple iOS and Google Android to the desktop application, as well as Excel Online as a purely browser-based variant. However, it should be noted that only the desktop version offers the full range of functions. A support document from Microsoft explains how the different variants differ. For example, Excel Online can open, change and save files with macros (*.xlsm) in them on mobile devices and in the browser. However, users can only execute their macros on the desktop. Classic COM add-ins and the import of data from various other sources, such as text or CSV files, also only work on the desktop.

Google Sheets vs. Excel online

If companies still use conventional add-ins or a larger stock of legacy data with macros in their day-to-day work, there will also be an effort within Microsoft's product family to migrate to modern web-based team collaboration. But in recent years, Google Spreadsheets, often simply called Google Sheets, have established themselves as a powerful Excel alternative.

Google Sheets is the online spreadsheet program from the Google Workspace feature set. Unlike Excel and other spreadsheet programs, Google has developed its spreadsheet from the ground up as a modern web application. The Progressive Web Apps (PWA) that Google offers for chromeOS, as well as other desktop and mobile operating systems, merely provide a shell for accessing the spreadsheet program as simply as possible. Google Sheets is a purely web-based application that users can use completely online and completely platform-independent with any current browser. All they need is an Internet connection.

Google Sheets features

Google Sheets offers a wide range of capabilities that are in no way inferior to comparable spreadsheet programs on the desktop, including numerous advanced features for business and scientific use cases. In a nutshell, Google Sheets shines with the following features:

• Easy collaboration: Google Sheets allows users to work on a spreadsheet simultaneously. Multiple users can make changes to the same spreadsheet without conflict. They can still communicate with each other using "@-Mentions," assign tasks, and access advanced collaboration features via Google's smart chips.
• Cloud storage: Since Google Sheets is a purely web-based application, the spreadsheets are stored in the cloud. The spreadsheets are accessible from any device and users can access them without having to download them to a specific device.
• Automatic backup: Google Sheets automatically saves changes while users are working on a spreadsheet. Users do not need to save their work manually.
• Add-ons: Google Sheets offers a variety of third-party add-ons that extend the functionality of the spreadsheet program. These add-ons can be used, for example, to import data automatically or to create charts.

In addition, users can extend the functionality of Google Spreadsheets with custom menus, functions, dialog boxes, and sidebars using Google Apps Script. Furthermore, they can use the scripts to integrate the spreadsheets with other Google Workspace services, such as Gmail, Calendar and Drive. The syntax of Google Apps Script is based on JavaScript and is easy to learn. Numerous code examples can be found online, which can be adapted for different use cases.

The functionality can be extended even more easily with the low-code / no-code solution Google AppSheet, which can be used to create mobile and browser apps without any programming effort. Users use Google Spreadsheets as a basis, display content from the spreadsheets in their apps, and save new and changed data from the app back into the spreadsheet. Google AppSheet also supports automation and notifications when defined events occur.

Are you interested in modern team work with Google Sheets and need support in migrating your inventory of Excel spreadsheets?