For the past ten years I've had a strong hunch that Google Sheets was better than Excel. Turns out I was right.
After talking to many spreadsheet "gurus," it turns out that anyone who prefers Excel actually knows nothing about Sheets, and most have never used it. One lady said she prefers Excel because "Google Sheets doesn't have =SUMIFS formula"
Like with anything - MAC vs PC, Android vs iPhone - the only people who are allowed to have an opinion are experts in both systems. Like me.
So here is the match-up.
TLDR: Google Sheets is better 99.9% of the time.
Ok let's go..
| Google Sheets | Excel | |
| Hotkey for editing a cell | In Sheets you hit ENTER to edit a cell. SEEMS OBVIOUS. | In Excel, GET THIS.. you hit.. F2. But on a Mac you hit Function F2. |
Experts in any software use hotkeys whenever possible. The fact that Excel has TWO HOTKEYS for "move down" (Down and Enter) yet you have to reach up to F2 to edit a cell.. is absurd.
In my opinion that should be a one-shot knockout, but let's keep going.
| Google Sheets | Excel | |
| Usability | 100% cloud-based so there's no question where files live. | Primarily desktop app, but there is a cloud version that is miserable to work in. |
| Speed | Lightning fast up to about 100,000 rows | Cloud-based is nightmarishly slow. Desktop app is faster than Google Sheets at 100,000+ rows. |
| Pivot Tables | Streamlined, quick, fancy, supports custom fields, automatic refresh. | Completely dogshit. Case in point - if the underlying data changes, you have to manually refresh the pivot table! That is insane. |
| Array Formulas | Surround the array formula with arrayformula(). It's that easy. | Really confusing system where you surround the formula with {} then hit shift enter. WTF is that. Also Excel arrayformula doesn't support as many formulas as Sheets. |
| Extensions | Sheets is fully extendible with JavaScript, the language of the internet. | Excel (desktop only) is extendible with Visual Basic, the fat old walrus of the internet. |
In summary:
You should use Excel if:
- You're working with very large data sets (150,000+ records) and don't know how to use a database (it's 2023 c'mon)
- You're doing really super heavy duty stuff
- You're required to because you're boss/professor is an old school accountant hack.
You should use Google Sheets if:
- Anything collaborative.
- Anything smaller than 150,000 rows
- Anything requiring advanced extensions
- Anything requiring an API
- Anything else ever