How to choose your favourite online spreadsheet

With almost everything moved ‘online’ it’s not surprising that our favourite productivity tools are there as well. Of course, that now means that we have a choice between programs, It’s time to answer that “age old question” (from 2006 🤣) Microsoft or Google. Let’s move to the second loud question – Google Sheets or Excel Online!

A spreadsheet by any name

When you compare them ‘next to each other’ (or one on top of the other), you can see that as with the other productivity programs, there isn’t that much difference, certainly in look.

After all a spreadsheet either calculates things or is used for data analyses.

Google Sheets

Excel Online

Formulas and Functions

Formulas

A quick note on creating your own formulas (instead of using a built-in function) – no differences here.

Both Excel Online and Google Sheets allow you to enter whatever formula you need. You start a formula with the equals sign (=) as expected.

Functions

The big thing with a spreadsheet is of course the functions that are available.

Both spreadsheets offer the ‘everyday’ functions that we all use. From the ‘basic’ options (Sum, Average, Count, Min and Max) to the useful logical and text functions (IF, Lookup, OR, AND).

Excel Online has access to the majority of ones available with the desktop version (Excel 365), which (as of writing) is around 550 functions. For those of us not performing complex or ‘higher level’ maths there’s a lot of them we just don’t need.

Likewise Sheets has a similar number coming in at 513, and most of them we just don’t need to use.

There are a few different functions that are specific to each program.

For example:

Google Sheets has functions built-in to take advantage of the other Google options (translate, images and more)

Excel Online has some new formulas like XLookup (which searches vertically (Vlookup) and horizontally (HLookup). As well as a few that are (currently) only available like NOT (to exclude things)

However, both companies continue to update the available functions, and it doesn’t take them long to catch up and match similar commands.

If there are specific functions that you want or need to use, it may help you choose which spreadsheet is best for your needs.

Data Analysis

The second reason to use a spreadsheet is for the data analysis, comparing or forecasting information.

Generally the analyse uses a lot of information, and the more you have the better the results can be. When you’ve got a lot of information, storing and working in rows and columns can just be easier.

For fairly ‘small’ amounts of information (say less than 1,000 rows), there isn’t that much between Google Sheets or Excel Online.

As you get more information, or have more specific needs the differences start to appear.

As Google Sheets wasn’t written with complex or involved data analyse in mind it doesn’t offer the offer the same advanced options as Excel Online does.

However, bear in mind, that with both these programs being online, you are reliant on the processing power outside of your computer. And that processing is shared with other people, as it’s on the servers running the websites.

In other words, you might find working with larger amounts of data slower on both of these programs.

If the speed and options are a concern, web-based spreadsheets might not be the right solution for this work.

Charts

Like everything else, with Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel Online, charting is very similar between them.

In terms of the actual charts – Sheets offers a couple of different options, including Map and Gauge, otherwise the variations are the same.

My personal preference, I prefer to be able to see and choose my chart type, before it’s created (i.e. Excel Online). While in Google Sheets, you insert the chart and then select which type to use.

Collaboration

When you read articles and posts about this, pretty much all of them will say that Google wins outright.

I’m not denying that Google is designed and built for sharing and collaborative working. However Excel and Excel Online also have these options built-in.

The one option I really like, and it’s across the whole of MS Office Online is the ‘Catch-up’ or ‘View Changes’. This shows you a list of the changes that have been made to the file – both by you and anyone who has edit access.

With a spreadsheet this can be important to discover how it’s been edited.

Watch my YouTube video to see it in action: See What’s Changed in Your Documents with Office Online

Next Steps

If you’re working on standard spreadsheets, without the need for complex commands, then it’s going to be personal preference which one you prefer to work with.

As you start to need more powerful options, you’ll want to check which program offers the commands that you need to work with.

Data analyse and large spreadsheets you might find that Excel Online is better, however it might be that the paid version of Excel 365 (with the rest of Microsoft365) becomes worth the expense.