Google Sheets vs Excel
After working with both of these tools extensively in my professional life, I will give my honest valuation of the two tools as well as input of different features.
(You can also find the article on my website together with other articles and more interesting things)
Introduction
Google Sheets and Excel are two of the most widespread spreadsheet Software’s in the market today, made by the Microsoft and Google.
They are in one way very similar, but in another way very different.
In this blog post I will go through the software one by one, and then give my final verdict with the basis of the different pros of the different tools.
What are the specific pros of the different tools?
Pros of Excel
- Processing Power — Power Pivot and Power Query
One big thing that differentiate the two tools are Power Pivot and Power Query, which I think are great parts of Excel.
If you have worked previously with Power BI you are probably well aware of Power Query.
It is a great way to be able to handle really large datasets.
Power Query is a way to perform automatic ETL (Explore, Transform, Load) processes inside Excel.
You can perform manipulation of the datasets, such as cleaning the data and joining different sources, and then save the manipulation automatically as macros for when new data are coming in.
- Available information
Excel have been around forever and the available information from people that have come around different problem is therefore extensively of course.
There are a lot of really good Online courses and youtube channels for learning Excel, such as MyOnlineTraningHub, Microsoft Excel — Excel from Beginner to Advanced and Beginner to Pro in Excel: Financial Modeling and Valuation.
Either if you want to get more advanced in Excel or want to have answer to specific problems, there will be a lot of information out there that can help.
- Available Functions
As Excel have been around for so long, and been market leading in Spreadsheet software it is natural that there are much more available functions available.
- Offline Access
Microsoft Excel is coming from the On Prem world and is therefore really powerful if you want to work Offline.
There are possibilities to work offline in Google Sheets as well, but the overview experience is better for Excel as they have both the Online and On Prem version.
Pros of Google Sheets
- User Interface (UI)
As someone working in Business Intelligence, I pay a lot of respect to the User Interface of the tools that I am using.
I think that Google are one of the best in the market on making products that looks very easy for the eye, they have really thought about how to utilize colors and other design choices when making their products.
Comparing the two pictures above, for me, Google Sheets, The one on top, are much more pleasing for the eyes.
It is skipping all the extra colors from Microsoft Excel, the green and grey on top and much more distinct grid lines.
- User Experience (UX)
Besides User Interface, from my perspective, Google Sheets also have a much better User Experience than Microsoft Excel.
Coming back to the two pictures above, Google Sheets feels much more intuitive to use as a end user.
I have used Excel for around 15 years, and Google Sheets mainly for 1 year, but I feel more at home with Google Sheets because how well they have created it in terms of experience for the user.
Some examples:
Create a new Spreadsheet
- Google Sheets: Write sheets.new in the browser (If logged in to Gmail) -> 1 click + almost instant
- Excel Online: Go to office.com and select new worksheet -> 2 click + waiting time
Working with charts
Google Sheets uses very similar design as for there Business Intelligence tool (Data Studio) and Google Analytics.
For me, the comparison between UI and UX is not even a competition, it is a walkover, Microsoft decided to not even show up to the game.
- Collaboration
It is very easy to collaborate in Google Sheets.
It is, naturally, very integrated with Google Drive and Gmail and it feels like the whole tool is used for collaboration.
Excel Online is integrated with One Drive and Outlook and have made a lot of progress in their Online version to mirror Google Sheets collaboration as much as possible.
But Excel have its roots in On Prem and it can still very widely be seen today, in both its online and on prem version.
- (Not anymore) — Possible to work online and pricing
If this was written before 2013, the possibility to work online and the pricing would be the main selling points for Google Sheets.
As Excel Online have come to the market, these possibilities are very much the same in Excel as in Google Sheets.
Verdict
Which tool wins and will be the sole contender of the throne in the future??
It depends…but Google Sheets for me
There are pros and cons with both of the tools, it comes down to individual preferences and what business area you are working in inside the organisation.
- For me as a Data Analyst/Former Business Intelligence Consultant — Prefer Google Sheets
As a Data Analyst and former Business Intelligence Consultant I must say that I prefer Google Sheets.
The pros for Google Sheets:
- Intuitive ease of use (UI)
- Design choices made by Google (UX) and
- Collaboration
makes it easier to work with and quicker to come to insights which are some of most important preferences.
You might be surprised as Excel has more possibility to do preprocessing than Google Sheets and can handle more data, which should be valuable in my profession?
This is not necessarily true, as there are so many other tools that can also do this preprocessing before the data is even coming in to the tool.
If you know some SQL you can do a lot of the things you can do in Power Query there already
The formulas in Google Sheets are still definitely enough to do all the things that I would need in my daily work.
Why the other pros for Excel is not enough for me to prefer Excel over Google Sheets
The other pros I listed for Excel:
- Available Information
- Available Functions
- Available Offline
are not as important for me as the Pros for Google Sheet.
To have more available function for me is not really that much of a pro for me at all.
The User Experience that Google Sheet is bringing is partly because they have less available functions which makes it easier to find the important things.
To be able to work offline could be good sometimes, but as “everything is moving to the cloud” at the moment, and collaboration is key, I do not feel that this is necessary.
As I mentioned earlier, if you want to do all the preprocessing, which the on prem version of Excel is great at, you can all of this in another tool.
You can then work with that tool offline instead if that is your preference.
The thing that I do really miss in Google Sheets is all the amazing Online Courses and available information that you can find about Excel.
This does not tip over to Excel, but it makes the comparison closer.
But on the other side, the need for online courses and information in Google Sheets is less because of less formulas and the more intuitive ease of use.
Conclusion
This article discusses the pros of Excel and Google Sheets and which one I would prefer as an Data Analyst or Business Intelligence Consultant.
For me the three pros I listed for Google Sheets
- Intuitive ease of use (UI)
- Design choices made by Google (UX) and
- Collaboration
weights more than the pros I listed for Excel
- Stronger pre-processing and transforming
- Available Information
- Available Functions
- Available Offline
Therefore I would chose Google Sheets as a first option between Google Sheets and Excel.
Thank you for reading
Thank you very much for reading my blog!
Drop a comment below if you liked the content or have other thoughts about Google Sheets and Excel.
I would be interested to hear more about how other people see these things.
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Questions or inquiries
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Have a great week everyone
//Elias
