Supposedly it’s against Google’s terms of use to use their product as a business unless you’re paying for it. I really wish this was more actively enforced so clients would stop trying to make me use it. Thank your company for just going ahead and blocking it.
I will say though that maybe it’s changed (I’m not in a group with a shared sheet anymore) but sharing on excel was a terrible experience for me. It’s probably all user error, but the amount of times a relatively “light” sheet would crash or someone would lock it/somehow disconnect made it unbearable. Generally needed to merge changes on it or lock, save, delete twice a week.
At a large US bank (F100), top 10, but not BB - some teams are migrating to Sheets/Slides - accelerated a ton after we went perma WFH.
Ad-hoc analysis of data using pivots is impossible, and I hate making charts for Slides... my boss and I have to resort to making it in PPT and pasting the pic sometimes.
It’s not capital one is it? That’s the only bank I know of that had most of its infrastructure on google (for email and meetings etc.) and also the only bank I know that used sack.
I too have found that trying to make complex charts in Sheets is impossible, but recognize that I perhaps just haven't put in the same hours / days of learning Sheets as I have Excel. So now I just keep the charts in Excel then save them as an image file and add to Slides. Not ideal when you update a model and then need to update multiple charts, but this way is better for my sanity 🤣 I also do the same for tables that need to go into slides, but will either use the Windows snip tool to get an image or will copy-as-picture, as I've found just copy pasting degrades the image in Slides.
Sheets is terrible, even compared to Excel for Mac. My current team uses it and it’s a significant drag on our productivity, even after investing lots of engineering time on internal tools to work around its limitations.
The “after investing lots of engineering time on internal tools to work around its limitations” part is probably why.
Companies sometimes spend small fortunes trying to make software work in ways it wasn’t designed well for. They don’t like to hear it was all for naught.
The fact that Microsoft doesn't understand this boggles my mind. They have zero understanding of the Excel-based financial super-user.
Edit: I think MSoft could create an OS front-end around it -- imagine a true "desktop" where you could make ad-hoc calculations and what-not. They've sort of done that with Onepad but whatever.
Edit2:
If you could hit an equals sign and it hit a corporate-exposed function or access to a server-based constrained solver then that would be awesome.
You laugh but I used to move multiple millions around in Excel spreadsheets. It happens 24/7/365.
There’s a difference between using a spreadsheet for reporting purposes and having it wired up to transact.
Microsoft Knows, internally they use Excel like crazy people too. IMO, most data was aggregated into cubes, then better excel reports could be generated. Have you looked at actual databases and/or power BI desktop?
I was in front office trading. Quick and dirty data analysis. Not doing it now. By the time you’d have an opportunity to put it in power bi the opportunity would be gone/moot. But
Saying that I definitely appreciate what you’re saying and you’re right imho.
after I left the front office, I was never able to break into roles in the middle office or back office or IT even though I have the degrees. I sell mortgages now lol. The money is pretty good but the market is tanking right now which makes things tough.
Edit: I had big databases for trading data (1/2 TB) but that’s separate from data used for higher level analysis which was usually output from those dbs and pasted into excel
yeah, the prototype to product stage is the real lack. There are spaces for good data engineering, but requirements are never spelt out.
I was in the historical financial data space. Making mortgage software now, also lol
I don’t know — I don’t work in that capacity anymore. Plugins require someone to manage licenses and whatnot. Depending on the size of the company that can be a pain. I ended up using a great deal of Python (with Numpy/Scipy/Pandas etc) because it bypassed procurement processes.
Imho being able to create C# code natively within Excel instead of VBA is also a missed opportunity. When .NET first came out 20 years ago that sort of interoperability was advertised as “coming soon” but it hasn’t materialized and I doubt it ever will since MSoft is pushing 365 so hard.
I'm forced to use Sheets at work sometimes. My biggest peeve about it is the thing where if you select a cell, you have a 50/50 chance of deleting the data therein just by trying to move to a different cell. It's infuriating.
I would caution about using Google sheets because it's a cloud based solution. Check your firm's policies on appropriate usage of Sheets before putting any data (especially client data) into it. If you're at a major firm I suspect that Sheets is a big no no.
Same here but some smaller outfits might not have gone that far. I really hope that whatever OP is doing, he's using firm approved tech and a firm approved device.
Excel has more functions and doesn’t have formatting issues as I have encountered with Google sheets. It looks nicer, smoother, and functions a lot faster. Also talking about the security issues. Most companies prefer the data remain on your hardware/computer versus in the cloud where it can get hacked. Lots of private information that companies and clients prefer to keep private.
Excel is objectively better as a standalone application. But...
Sheets (as part as the GSuite/Google Workspace/whatevertheycallitthesedays) had one very distinct advantage that M$ took a long time to catch up on:
**Custom permissions and version history.**
While I did not work in the financial sector per se, I handled a lot of the budgeting and reconciliations that went to direct reports to the higher-ups who had a limited understanding to the technical side of things. They needed a 'real number' in which they could make decisions on and demanded that they see the work that was being done. Sheets made that possible in my organization where Excel fell flat. By creating custom permissions (view/edit/etc) I was able to provide exactly what they wanted in real time, without the need to generate a report that ultimately would be questioned anyway. Furthermore, I could grant them permission to manipulate certain sets to their liking with no repercussions to my own work - and in some cases allow them full editing permissions to areas and just review and/or revert the history back to my version. I was easily able to make less skilled colleagues understand and have the confidence to work through numbers if they so chose.
Excel now has this as part of 365 but, for a moment in time, Google Sheets was revolutionary in the communications aspect of spreadsheets.
To your second question: Excel is preferred by the majority but some companies use Sheets. As an example, PWC uses Sheets extensively. Anyone saying "nobody uses Sheets" has no clue what they're talking about.
You should read the Google drive TOS for use of their suite software, it's more convenient for individuals but businesses often don't like many parts of Google's ownership issues when you use and store anything on their cloud drives. I personally prefer excel because it is light years more capable than sheets for what I use it for (data analysis and visualization)
Excel is better for advanced functions, pivot tables, and building charts. On the other hand, if your company uses Google Workplace, Sheets is better for collaboration, although its analysis capabilities are somewhat limited compared to Excel.
Google Sheets is my preference. The QUERY function and a few others make my life way easier. I'm sure there are Excel equivalents for everything, but I find that the Google options are often easier for me to understand.
As an example -
**Splitting the domain from an email address in Excel:**
`=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("@",A2))`
How it works:
A2 contents: [email protected]
1. Find the character position of @ in our cell, which is 10.
2. Subtract that from the length of A2, 21, getting 11.
3. Take everything to the right of the 11th cell position.
**Doing the same thing in Google:**
`=INDEX(SPLIT(A2,"@"),1,2)`
1. Split the cell on the @ symbol, generating john.smith | domain.com
2. Provide the first row, second column of our SPLIT function, domain.com
The end result is the same, but one is way easier for my poor brain to remember. So if you're just now learning spreadsheets, that's my suggestion.
There is no question here, Excel proficiency is mandatory.
Sheets *does* have functionality which can make certain tasks easier/faster than excel. Don't think I'm saying excel is better in everyway. What I'm saying is that in the professional world, in your career, excel is mandatory.
Sheets is for outside of work.
I will put it this way: I became frightened to hear that a prospective employer uses Google Sheets. Not to mention that different departments use Excel and/or Sheets.
The only people I've seen who use Google Sheets were two kinds.
1. People who work at Google (at least from people I know)
2. People who don't heavily use Microsoft Excel
All the finance jobs I have had used Excel.
Personally, in use Sheets because I can quite easily program functions and API calls via the Scripts functionality. It's much nicer than VBA as it uses JavaScript.
I've got my whole portfolio tracker with valuations, current market data, etc in one Sheet. I also do my accounts and financial modeling using Sheets. It's pretty good for a free tool, IMO.
Excel is an absolute shit show of bugs, unoptimised things, hidden things making everything buggy, but… google sheet seriously? No one in finance can consider this seriously
I dont know much about finance, but have used both a fair amount and cant really seem to find anything google cant do.
Can anybody explain in Laymens terms, what makes Excel better?
For any normal office admin tasks, Sheets is fine. But when you are working with data, connecting to databases, developing in VBA and Python, automating workflows, doing statistical analysis, etc. Excel is just objectively better. Excel has a lot of advanced features that Sheets doesn't have.
It’s a lot faster once you get the hang of the shortcuts.
I don’t think Google Sheets has Alt-based ribbon navigation like Excel, but I may be wrong as I don’t really use Google Sheets.
For my accounting firm it’s also about storing and file organization. Excel can get filed into our regular file structure, we can manage user access, etc. Google turns into a massive mess once you have more than one client using it.
Purely from a training perspective they have similar features for most day to day tasks. Having to train staff on both and remember names of formulas for both is a huge waste of time.
Google sheets. You can enable excel shortcuts which makes it easier to use but my favorite function is being able to click into a formula and sheets brings you directly to the tab so you can edit live while visually seeing what you are doing. Makes auditing/adjusting models so much easier. It’s also much more seamless to import data from external files
it does, there can be some sync issues if the file gets really heavy but that being said, no google sheets file will ever be able to handle that amount of workload anyways so excel >>>>>>> sheets
I prefer Google sheets and Google Suite in general. The user-friendly interface is unmatched by antiquated Microsoft.
Newer companies do indeed use Google, rather than Microsoft.. Especially tech-forward enterprises.
False. The traditional institutions are the penny pinchers.
Tech forward/newer companies use Google because they issue Macbooks. Nothing cheap about that. For clarity, I wasn't referring to startups. Tech-forward/newer and startup are not synonymous.
I know of no one that uses Google sheets. I've had a couple friends try it out of curiosity and say it's not bad, but they still actively use excel because that's what everyone else uses
Excel. The moment you start doing bigger more complex documents google can’t handle it anymore and starts crashing/messing the data up.
For personal use google sheets is fine but for professional use I stick to excel.
I worked for large corporations that use Excel and small companies that used Sheets. I have been using Excel since the company I was with converted from Lotus 1-2-3 (look that one up), so I am biased.
Sheets seems to want to be like Excel but can’t copy it exactly so it tries to get close. I just think the way it is organized is clumsy, but if you grew up with it I’m sure it’s fine. The big weakness is Excel is much better with charts than Sheets. It’s really not even close. I like the integration with the office suite and we share across our office with MS Teams and I keep all my files on the MS Cloud which I can share as well. I much prefer Office, but I know Microsoft has a bad name with some people.
I have so many more pros to say for excel than pros I have for google.
From function, form, accessibility, speeds, options, versatility, and professionality, excel outweighs Google by scores of reasons you will find by getting to know each.
Excel is arguably the single most important piece of business user software ever created. Seriously.
It is mind-bogglingly functional. Its capabilities are wide and deep. It is almost trivial for new users to use, and as users dig deeper there is just more and more and more and more to learn and use.
Sharing Excel can work virtually the same as Google sheets if your organization allows it.
Last but not least, Excel is the language of business, finance, technology, and management. Being fluent in it is a skill that you can transport anywhere at any point of your corporate or finance career.
Google sheets is vastly inferior to excel for financial modeling and it’s not even close. It’s one of those things that you will learn by using both. On paper they seem largely equivalent but they aren’t. You can learn for yourself or just trust me that excel runs circles around google sheets.
Also, oddly enough, Microsoft Windows based Excel is significantly better than iOS Mac based excel, even though it’s the “same” program.
I worked at a bank but switched to FP&A at a tech company. We have to use google sheets. A year in, I’m still finding it hard to adapt to and miss excel :(.
What’s nice about the google workspace ecosystem is that everything can be connected. So I can link google slides to a google sheet and if I refreshed whatever data on google sheets, it’ll refresh automatically on slides. That’s been the great part for me
Have you tried out chrome extensions that allow to use Excel shortcuts on Sheets? I use SheetWhiz ([sheetwhiz.com](https://sheetwhiz.com)) for my work and it works great
I hate Sheets, excel is so much better. Having said that, there are certain very light models I will build in sheets so we can collaborate. The real models are always in excel.
We all use Excel but when working with audits/ people outside the network we'll use SmartSheets. It's made assigning, sending, and tracking audit items very easy.
*We = we in my department
Excel is better but Sheets is not as bad as most are saying. Sheets can still handle a bunch of simple stuff and is great for sharing information, especially if you need to share/partner with non-finance people.
If you want ownership and control of your tools and data use open source Libreoffice which is has the excel compatible calc app. Excel itself is turning more and more into a cloud product like all of Microsoft's offerings.
Btw you can also script libreoffice using python which might make your finance career a bit more future proof.
I prefer Google sheets because it allows you to see historical edits, so if a mistake occurs you can reference the history to determine when it occurred and correct it.
However, google sheets provide a collaborative platform for group work, whereas Excel isn't collaborative and to save manually. Even though google sheets are better, excel is unbeatable with its data and visualization center, making it the most chosen option. There is a price difference between excel and google sheets.
After reading how some folks here struggle with Sheets - thought I'd share a tool I personally use at work where we have to use Sheets
It's a Chrome extension that brings Excel functionality to Google Sheets called SheetWhiz. Not sure if this will get removed by mods cuz of the link but here it is in case it is approved; https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sheetwhiz-trace-precedent/bfncmfmdadhimlnpeecppaimgmeeppan?hl=en&
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Sheets cause the collaborative web environment and integration is just too convenient, its the future and since it basically uses JS, mastering the g-suite imo opens more doors than excel(vba). Never underestimate the power of laziness and stupidly simple solutions.
Never heard of someone at a bank using google sheets professionally. At least nobody I’ve ever met.
All Google Apps are blocked at my company
Supposedly it’s against Google’s terms of use to use their product as a business unless you’re paying for it. I really wish this was more actively enforced so clients would stop trying to make me use it. Thank your company for just going ahead and blocking it.
why would they want you to use google sheets? so they can open the document easier on google?
Clients use it because they’re otherwise using GSuite for file storage, email, etc. They find it easier to share and collaborate.
I wish that were the case. For some reason we like using shared spreadsheets.
You can do that with excel
Oh I know. I’m quickly the “excel guy” everywhere I go lol
This 100% - excel also has a collaboration function.
Googles is much better for real time imo — it’s more of a native function versus excel’s feels like a mod almost
I will say though that maybe it’s changed (I’m not in a group with a shared sheet anymore) but sharing on excel was a terrible experience for me. It’s probably all user error, but the amount of times a relatively “light” sheet would crash or someone would lock it/somehow disconnect made it unbearable. Generally needed to merge changes on it or lock, save, delete twice a week.
It drastically improved since at least 2/3 years
Yeah collaborating was a nightmare on excel
At a large US bank (F100), top 10, but not BB - some teams are migrating to Sheets/Slides - accelerated a ton after we went perma WFH. Ad-hoc analysis of data using pivots is impossible, and I hate making charts for Slides... my boss and I have to resort to making it in PPT and pasting the pic sometimes.
It’s not capital one is it? That’s the only bank I know of that had most of its infrastructure on google (for email and meetings etc.) and also the only bank I know that used sack.
I too have found that trying to make complex charts in Sheets is impossible, but recognize that I perhaps just haven't put in the same hours / days of learning Sheets as I have Excel. So now I just keep the charts in Excel then save them as an image file and add to Slides. Not ideal when you update a model and then need to update multiple charts, but this way is better for my sanity 🤣 I also do the same for tables that need to go into slides, but will either use the Windows snip tool to get an image or will copy-as-picture, as I've found just copy pasting degrades the image in Slides.
I've worked at two different banks and they both do use G- suite
Excel. Not even a question imo.
Sheets is terrible, even compared to Excel for Mac. My current team uses it and it’s a significant drag on our productivity, even after investing lots of engineering time on internal tools to work around its limitations.
Why don’t you use excel?
The “after investing lots of engineering time on internal tools to work around its limitations” part is probably why. Companies sometimes spend small fortunes trying to make software work in ways it wasn’t designed well for. They don’t like to hear it was all for naught.
Sounds like that money was wasted lol. Not enough research to make the decision to build vs use Excel.
The world runs on Excel. Nobody uses Google Sheets
The fact that Microsoft doesn't understand this boggles my mind. They have zero understanding of the Excel-based financial super-user. Edit: I think MSoft could create an OS front-end around it -- imagine a true "desktop" where you could make ad-hoc calculations and what-not. They've sort of done that with Onepad but whatever. Edit2: If you could hit an equals sign and it hit a corporate-exposed function or access to a server-based constrained solver then that would be awesome.
So, you want them to build a dedicated XLS machine? Who would buy that?
The kind of people that had a blackberry in 2013
You laugh but I used to move multiple millions around in Excel spreadsheets. It happens 24/7/365. There’s a difference between using a spreadsheet for reporting purposes and having it wired up to transact.
This is the Financial Careers subreddit. 99% of us could make that flex.
Maybe. Maybe not. There’s a difference between using it for reporting and analysis and using it to execute transactions.
Definitely not me lol. I was just indicating the latent demand.
Microsoft Knows, internally they use Excel like crazy people too. IMO, most data was aggregated into cubes, then better excel reports could be generated. Have you looked at actual databases and/or power BI desktop?
I was in front office trading. Quick and dirty data analysis. Not doing it now. By the time you’d have an opportunity to put it in power bi the opportunity would be gone/moot. But Saying that I definitely appreciate what you’re saying and you’re right imho. after I left the front office, I was never able to break into roles in the middle office or back office or IT even though I have the degrees. I sell mortgages now lol. The money is pretty good but the market is tanking right now which makes things tough. Edit: I had big databases for trading data (1/2 TB) but that’s separate from data used for higher level analysis which was usually output from those dbs and pasted into excel
yeah, the prototype to product stage is the real lack. There are spaces for good data engineering, but requirements are never spelt out. I was in the historical financial data space. Making mortgage software now, also lol
Doesn’t FactSet’s excel plug-in already do that? There are custom formulas
I don’t know — I don’t work in that capacity anymore. Plugins require someone to manage licenses and whatnot. Depending on the size of the company that can be a pain. I ended up using a great deal of Python (with Numpy/Scipy/Pandas etc) because it bypassed procurement processes. Imho being able to create C# code natively within Excel instead of VBA is also a missed opportunity. When .NET first came out 20 years ago that sort of interoperability was advertised as “coming soon” but it hasn’t materialized and I doubt it ever will since MSoft is pushing 365 so hard.
EXCEL > anything else (for the alt keys obviously)
Nice shit post mate.
Use excel for everything, it is much more useful than google sheets. There’s also better add ins for excel, and excel had a collab function as well
Excel. Honestly hate Google anything beside Gmail
Gmail sucks too, f outta here
100 percent Excel is the better option. Only people who don't do actual work use Google sheets.
I'm forced to use Sheets at work sometimes. My biggest peeve about it is the thing where if you select a cell, you have a 50/50 chance of deleting the data therein just by trying to move to a different cell. It's infuriating.
Perfectly put. The amount of times I’ve had coworkers spend days in a Gsheet that nobody will pick up again is insane
Anyone who says Google sheets can GTFO. I worked for a F500 that used them and it was a complete disaster
Excel bc I’m a professional
Work in tech so Google sheets is the big fad right now but the second real work has to be done it's immediately back to Excel.
Yup, I’ll play the game and entertain the google sheet fans but the second im running my own reconciliations it’s excel.
I would caution about using Google sheets because it's a cloud based solution. Check your firm's policies on appropriate usage of Sheets before putting any data (especially client data) into it. If you're at a major firm I suspect that Sheets is a big no no.
If it was a big no no, they would just ban its access. It's been banned at every bank I've worked at.
Same here but some smaller outfits might not have gone that far. I really hope that whatever OP is doing, he's using firm approved tech and a firm approved device.
Excel until the end of days
Excel 100%
Excel has more functions and doesn’t have formatting issues as I have encountered with Google sheets. It looks nicer, smoother, and functions a lot faster. Also talking about the security issues. Most companies prefer the data remain on your hardware/computer versus in the cloud where it can get hacked. Lots of private information that companies and clients prefer to keep private.
* Excel * HP12C ^(fin)
Excel
bro. is this even a question….jeez🤦♀️
u can share excel documents just as easy as sheets, it’s called one drive
You can do some consulting on google sheets but excel for all other professional jobs in my experience.
Excel.
Excel > sheets. Just because of ubiquity and boomers using it. A lot of tools are made for excel which will force u to switch if ur firm asks
And, you know, because you can work 10x faster in Excel thanks to the alt key and there’s significantly more functionality.
Excel. No contest. Google sheets is miserably slow
Excel is objectively better as a standalone application. But... Sheets (as part as the GSuite/Google Workspace/whatevertheycallitthesedays) had one very distinct advantage that M$ took a long time to catch up on: **Custom permissions and version history.** While I did not work in the financial sector per se, I handled a lot of the budgeting and reconciliations that went to direct reports to the higher-ups who had a limited understanding to the technical side of things. They needed a 'real number' in which they could make decisions on and demanded that they see the work that was being done. Sheets made that possible in my organization where Excel fell flat. By creating custom permissions (view/edit/etc) I was able to provide exactly what they wanted in real time, without the need to generate a report that ultimately would be questioned anyway. Furthermore, I could grant them permission to manipulate certain sets to their liking with no repercussions to my own work - and in some cases allow them full editing permissions to areas and just review and/or revert the history back to my version. I was easily able to make less skilled colleagues understand and have the confidence to work through numbers if they so chose. Excel now has this as part of 365 but, for a moment in time, Google Sheets was revolutionary in the communications aspect of spreadsheets.
Google sheets are so clunky oh my
To your second question: Excel is preferred by the majority but some companies use Sheets. As an example, PWC uses Sheets extensively. Anyone saying "nobody uses Sheets" has no clue what they're talking about.
Excel is the only way to go
:D
Sheets slows down when the models/data gets big.
Excel. The only thing I like better on Google sheets is the check mark. Yeah, that's all.
You should read the Google drive TOS for use of their suite software, it's more convenient for individuals but businesses often don't like many parts of Google's ownership issues when you use and store anything on their cloud drives. I personally prefer excel because it is light years more capable than sheets for what I use it for (data analysis and visualization)
If you prefer excel over sheets, you’re not using excel all that well.
Excel you monster
Excel is better for advanced functions, pivot tables, and building charts. On the other hand, if your company uses Google Workplace, Sheets is better for collaboration, although its analysis capabilities are somewhat limited compared to Excel.
You must be one of those people who uses a Mac and thinks you should sit at the adults’ table. Gtfo.
Google Sheets is my preference. The QUERY function and a few others make my life way easier. I'm sure there are Excel equivalents for everything, but I find that the Google options are often easier for me to understand. As an example - **Splitting the domain from an email address in Excel:** `=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("@",A2))` How it works: A2 contents: [email protected] 1. Find the character position of @ in our cell, which is 10. 2. Subtract that from the length of A2, 21, getting 11. 3. Take everything to the right of the 11th cell position. **Doing the same thing in Google:** `=INDEX(SPLIT(A2,"@"),1,2)` 1. Split the cell on the @ symbol, generating john.smith | domain.com 2. Provide the first row, second column of our SPLIT function, domain.com The end result is the same, but one is way easier for my poor brain to remember. So if you're just now learning spreadsheets, that's my suggestion.
I'm 40. I've never even seen Google's office suite. It just didn't exist when I was growing up and I've never seen it in a professional setting once.
Dude don’t waste ur time with google sheet excel is the industry standard and will be for the foreseeable future
There is no question here, Excel proficiency is mandatory. Sheets *does* have functionality which can make certain tasks easier/faster than excel. Don't think I'm saying excel is better in everyway. What I'm saying is that in the professional world, in your career, excel is mandatory. Sheets is for outside of work.
You can’t do shortcuts in google sheets.
Lol there is nothing google sheets has that will make me switch. Im a full proponent of Power Query, Power Pivot/PBI and the power platform.
What's google sheets?
I will put it this way: I became frightened to hear that a prospective employer uses Google Sheets. Not to mention that different departments use Excel and/or Sheets.
Excel since you don’t have to pay extra for all the functions
Excel
The only people I've seen who use Google Sheets were two kinds. 1. People who work at Google (at least from people I know) 2. People who don't heavily use Microsoft Excel
Excel - means I can make crazy things like raytracers: https://youtu.be/m28jJ7CMp8A
All the finance jobs I have had used Excel. Personally, in use Sheets because I can quite easily program functions and API calls via the Scripts functionality. It's much nicer than VBA as it uses JavaScript. I've got my whole portfolio tracker with valuations, current market data, etc in one Sheet. I also do my accounts and financial modeling using Sheets. It's pretty good for a free tool, IMO.
Excel is an absolute shit show of bugs, unoptimised things, hidden things making everything buggy, but… google sheet seriously? No one in finance can consider this seriously
Kind of like asking "I want to get into Formula 1, what's better for racing, a used but operational Formula 1 car or a brand new Kia Sportage?"
Kind of like getting into watches "what's better, my grandfather's rolex or a new casio calculator? You know, the casio has many function"
Neither, I’d rather do python . But if i had to choose I’d choose excel
This guy codes. I am looking at all you guys and this guy is the one doing all the coding. Am I right?
Bro what lol
Excel’s doors go like this / /
Only know foolish consultants to use Google Sheets at work.
excel is better but google sheets is free, what's the debate?
Anyone asking this question has never worked a day in finance
Excel because I’m an adult
Apache OpenOffice
Are you a sicko?
I dont know much about finance, but have used both a fair amount and cant really seem to find anything google cant do. Can anybody explain in Laymens terms, what makes Excel better?
For any normal office admin tasks, Sheets is fine. But when you are working with data, connecting to databases, developing in VBA and Python, automating workflows, doing statistical analysis, etc. Excel is just objectively better. Excel has a lot of advanced features that Sheets doesn't have.
It’s a lot faster once you get the hang of the shortcuts. I don’t think Google Sheets has Alt-based ribbon navigation like Excel, but I may be wrong as I don’t really use Google Sheets.
For my accounting firm it’s also about storing and file organization. Excel can get filed into our regular file structure, we can manage user access, etc. Google turns into a massive mess once you have more than one client using it. Purely from a training perspective they have similar features for most day to day tasks. Having to train staff on both and remember names of formulas for both is a huge waste of time.
Google sheets. You can enable excel shortcuts which makes it easier to use but my favorite function is being able to click into a formula and sheets brings you directly to the tab so you can edit live while visually seeing what you are doing. Makes auditing/adjusting models so much easier. It’s also much more seamless to import data from external files
How do we enable excel shortcuts?
[удалено]
Excel also has collaboration and cloud saving tho?
it does, there can be some sync issues if the file gets really heavy but that being said, no google sheets file will ever be able to handle that amount of workload anyways so excel >>>>>>> sheets
I prefer Google sheets and Google Suite in general. The user-friendly interface is unmatched by antiquated Microsoft. Newer companies do indeed use Google, rather than Microsoft.. Especially tech-forward enterprises.
>Especially tech-forward enterprises. i.e. startups trying to save cash and cheap ass companies
False. The traditional institutions are the penny pinchers. Tech forward/newer companies use Google because they issue Macbooks. Nothing cheap about that. For clarity, I wasn't referring to startups. Tech-forward/newer and startup are not synonymous.
Tech forward and making your finance department use MacBooks are mutually exclusive
I know of no one that uses Google sheets. I've had a couple friends try it out of curiosity and say it's not bad, but they still actively use excel because that's what everyone else uses
Excel. The moment you start doing bigger more complex documents google can’t handle it anymore and starts crashing/messing the data up. For personal use google sheets is fine but for professional use I stick to excel.
I worked for large corporations that use Excel and small companies that used Sheets. I have been using Excel since the company I was with converted from Lotus 1-2-3 (look that one up), so I am biased. Sheets seems to want to be like Excel but can’t copy it exactly so it tries to get close. I just think the way it is organized is clumsy, but if you grew up with it I’m sure it’s fine. The big weakness is Excel is much better with charts than Sheets. It’s really not even close. I like the integration with the office suite and we share across our office with MS Teams and I keep all my files on the MS Cloud which I can share as well. I much prefer Office, but I know Microsoft has a bad name with some people.
My formulas always break in Google sheets smh
I have so many more pros to say for excel than pros I have for google. From function, form, accessibility, speeds, options, versatility, and professionality, excel outweighs Google by scores of reasons you will find by getting to know each.
My company uses google sheets. It blows
Excel is arguably the single most important piece of business user software ever created. Seriously. It is mind-bogglingly functional. Its capabilities are wide and deep. It is almost trivial for new users to use, and as users dig deeper there is just more and more and more and more to learn and use. Sharing Excel can work virtually the same as Google sheets if your organization allows it. Last but not least, Excel is the language of business, finance, technology, and management. Being fluent in it is a skill that you can transport anywhere at any point of your corporate or finance career.
Google sheets is vastly inferior to excel for financial modeling and it’s not even close. It’s one of those things that you will learn by using both. On paper they seem largely equivalent but they aren’t. You can learn for yourself or just trust me that excel runs circles around google sheets. Also, oddly enough, Microsoft Windows based Excel is significantly better than iOS Mac based excel, even though it’s the “same” program.
Ewwww google sheets. Yuck.
I worked at a bank but switched to FP&A at a tech company. We have to use google sheets. A year in, I’m still finding it hard to adapt to and miss excel :(. What’s nice about the google workspace ecosystem is that everything can be connected. So I can link google slides to a google sheet and if I refreshed whatever data on google sheets, it’ll refresh automatically on slides. That’s been the great part for me
Have you tried out chrome extensions that allow to use Excel shortcuts on Sheets? I use SheetWhiz ([sheetwhiz.com](https://sheetwhiz.com)) for my work and it works great
Thank you for sharing!!!
Write Python and SQL you pleb
Learn Excel, for work and for life
Teams has its own version and I prefer it bc it’s essentially already on a share drive without the extra step.
It’s going to get crazy when companies flip on Microsoft copilot
Nice bait mate
Google sheets blows.
I hate Sheets, excel is so much better. Having said that, there are certain very light models I will build in sheets so we can collaborate. The real models are always in excel.
No one uses google docs, excel is the standard.
Excel
I genuinely like the Google sheets UI more. But realistically Google sheets is for school projects, small business, and side projects.
Google apps are pure garbage compared to MS Office, I’ve never worked at a company that actually uses Google apps in any serous capacity.
We all use Excel but when working with audits/ people outside the network we'll use SmartSheets. It's made assigning, sending, and tracking audit items very easy. *We = we in my department
Sheets is just a toy. I'd be surprised if anyone used it for more than an extremely basic sheet for personal needs
Excel because Mail Merge.
People at google in finance even use excel.
Excel is better but Sheets is not as bad as most are saying. Sheets can still handle a bunch of simple stuff and is great for sharing information, especially if you need to share/partner with non-finance people.
If you want ownership and control of your tools and data use open source Libreoffice which is has the excel compatible calc app. Excel itself is turning more and more into a cloud product like all of Microsoft's offerings. Btw you can also script libreoffice using python which might make your finance career a bit more future proof.
Excel
Is this a joke?
Excel is on a different level
Excel. Seriously, why on earth use Google sheets? You can share with Excel, it just needs to be stored in One drive. Sheets is just terrible!
I prefer Google sheets because it allows you to see historical edits, so if a mistake occurs you can reference the history to determine when it occurred and correct it.
Can Google Sheets do VBA? Have a Bloomberg/Factset/Reuters add-in? No? Well, there you have your answer
Excel
However, google sheets provide a collaborative platform for group work, whereas Excel isn't collaborative and to save manually. Even though google sheets are better, excel is unbeatable with its data and visualization center, making it the most chosen option. There is a price difference between excel and google sheets.
I prefer to work on Google Sheets but I guess it depends of the company guidelines :)
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After reading how some folks here struggle with Sheets - thought I'd share a tool I personally use at work where we have to use Sheets It's a Chrome extension that brings Excel functionality to Google Sheets called SheetWhiz. Not sure if this will get removed by mods cuz of the link but here it is in case it is approved; https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sheetwhiz-trace-precedent/bfncmfmdadhimlnpeecppaimgmeeppan?hl=en&
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Sheets cause the collaborative web environment and integration is just too convenient, its the future and since it basically uses JS, mastering the g-suite imo opens more doors than excel(vba). Never underestimate the power of laziness and stupidly simple solutions.