5 ms·

Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff

Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.

therealidiot 9y ago
Google Sheets kinda sucks performance-wise though
triplee 9y ago
It's on everyone's computer in the office, and doesn't require internet or training outside of your non-tech specialty. Also, there's a TON of .xlsx files in the wild with years of business knowledge and processing. Everyone uses about the same 50% or so of Excel, which is captured in Google Sheets and any other spreadsheet. It's the extra 20% that everyone else uses -- and it's a different 20% for everyone -- that causes the issue of entrenchment.
noobhacker 9y ago
People are wedded to Excel because they've spent a lot of time learning it and don't want their skills to become obsolete. The resistance is rooted in psychological / political reasons, not technical ones.
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  Google sheets has a vastly inferior performance and feature set, trying to chalk that up as "psychological / political reasons" is pure spin.
- sevensor 9y ago
  I disagree. For users who aren't going to make the leap to "real" programming, spreadsheets are a huge boon. Excel is the only thing many domain experts can use to turn their knowledge into a computational model. Sure, there are tons of problems compared to models implemented in general-purpose programming languages, and we love to complain about the atrocities committed in Excel, but nobody's yet managed to devise an alternative with the same low barrier to entry.
  - itomato 9y ago
    Spreadsheets are a huge risk to everyone, especially those who haven't made the leap to "real" programming. Excel, 1-2-3, Visicalc are, taxonomically speaking, in the same class. We have a new order of tools. While they have their own inherent risks, they reflect literally decades of thinking about the risks and limitations of tools whose lineage traces back to Visicalc. Macro management and security, versioning, distributed access, multidimensionality; all are addressed in a handful of ways with Alpha, Tableau, Looker and other progressive tools. Excel, floppies, line printers; relics.
  - noobhacker 9y ago
    I agree 100% that Excel is best for people who aren't going to make the leap#. My point is that domain experts should* make the leap to "real" programming, especially R to handle data analysis. Excel is faster to get started. But for advanced tasks, the time it takes to learn Excel / R is about the same. A big reason why people don't make the leap is because they already spent too much time becoming an Excel expert. Indeed, for young analysts with no baggage, a lot of people learn and use R instead.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  Have you ever been a power user of Microsoft Excel? And then tried to replicate that functionality in Google Sheets? Or is your aversion mostly to the M- word? I find it funny that when it comes to vi vs emacs (or any such similarly geek-approved thing), fans of each will jump up in arms about the precise reason their platform is better, but the same kind of people would not want to take hundreds of thousands of business professionals at their word about why they like using a particular piece of software.
  - michaelmrose 9y ago
    Probably because the geeks can consider the virtues of making a spreadsheet vs an application while the office workers are incapable of understanding more than half the equation. Also office workers can't always be trusted to even plug things in let alone properly assess what an optimal solution looks like.
    - vilmosi 9y ago
      Geeks aren't as smart as they think they are. Particularly when it comes to business requirements. I'm guilty of that as much as anyone.
  - noobhacker 9y ago
    I come from a data analysis background, and I'm thinking about R / Python as the alternative to Excel, not Google Sheets. People used to use Excel to run regression, visualize data, etc. which I consider inferior to R / Python. I can't speak about other uses of Excel, e.g. financial modeling, insurance.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files Those things. I literally run and pay for Parallels on my Mac for the Windows version of Excel. (Mostly for the keyboard shortcuts.)
TimPC 9y ago
That's a pretty big aside. Like big enough to be a valid reason in and of itself. The other part is performance and interface lag which still tends to be an issue on any reasonable amount of data.
berberous 9y ago
Why use VIM, emacs or Sublime Text, when some online cloud coding platform can probably do the same thing? In addition to the things you mentioned, Excel is an offline, native app, with much more speed and efficiency when dealing with complex or large spreadsheets, IMO.
rb808 9y ago
Excel is a proper gui, Sheets is remarkable achievement in javascript but sucks to use for more than light work. Even editing a few cells in Google Sheets is fiddly.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
En_gr_Student 9y ago
It is called "technical debt" and "organizational momentum". What do you do to stop a few million person-years of investment in a toolset without loss of value? ... usually, nothing much. This is one reason that new OS and new Office versions also raise substantial ire in those same folks. There are semiconductor fabs running most of their machinery on Windows XP for the foreseeable future.
- newman8r 9y ago
  and don't tell them if their equipment pops up on shodan unless you want an accusatory tone and questions relating to you being a "hacker"
kgwgk 9y ago
VBA, forms, integration with data sources... "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
allenz 9y ago
The main reason is that Excel has features for professionals, but another reason is that some companies don't want Google to have access to their data.
DanBC 9y ago
I love other spreadsheets. I use a few of them. My first was Lotus 123. But Excel is used because it's very very good. Many of the people use it need this one small weird thing, and Excel has it and none of the others do yet. And that one small weird thing is different for everyone. It's a bit scary to see how much stuff is kept going with scary hairballs of VBA and macros and god-knows-what. The EUSPRIG has more information. For example, this about spreadsheets in clinical medicine: http://www.eusprig.org/2006/spreadsheets-in-clinical-medicine-warning.pdf http://www.eusprig.org/2006/spreadsheets-in-clinical-medicin...
IncRnd 9y ago
You can pull in data from other sources, your business data is on your company NAS not unencrypted somewhere in the cloud, Excel is faster for real-world volumes of data, group policy & management functions, etc.
shostack 9y ago
Not sure why you got downvoted as this is a fair question. I use both on a daily basis. Our org is on the Google Apps for Business stack which is why I use Google Sheets, but I'm considering getting us on Office 365 for the collaboration capabilities of Google Sheets paired with the functionality and advanced features of Excel. Simply put, Excel can do way more, is faster, and frankly, takes less time to do things in because I'm deeply familiar with it from years of repetition and troubleshooting. There's also WAAAY more documentation and tutorials available for it when you do encounter a problem.

therealidiot 9y ago

Google Sheets kinda sucks performance-wise though

triplee 9y ago

It's on everyone's computer in the office, and doesn't require internet or training outside of your non-tech specialty. Also, there's a TON of .xlsx files in the wild with years of business knowledge and processing. Everyone uses about the same 50% or so of Excel, which is captured in Google Sheets and any other spreadsheet. It's the extra 20% that everyone else uses -- and it's a different 20% for everyone -- that causes the issue of entrenchment.

noobhacker 9y ago

People are wedded to Excel because they've spent a lot of time learning it and don't want their skills to become obsolete. The resistance is rooted in psychological / political reasons, not technical ones.

throwaway2048 9y ago
Google sheets has a vastly inferior performance and feature set, trying to chalk that up as "psychological / political reasons" is pure spin.
sevensor 9y ago
I disagree. For users who aren't going to make the leap to "real" programming, spreadsheets are a huge boon. Excel is the only thing many domain experts can use to turn their knowledge into a computational model. Sure, there are tons of problems compared to models implemented in general-purpose programming languages, and we love to complain about the atrocities committed in Excel, but nobody's yet managed to devise an alternative with the same low barrier to entry.
- itomato 9y ago
  Spreadsheets are a huge risk to everyone, especially those who haven't made the leap to "real" programming. Excel, 1-2-3, Visicalc are, taxonomically speaking, in the same class. We have a new order of tools. While they have their own inherent risks, they reflect literally decades of thinking about the risks and limitations of tools whose lineage traces back to Visicalc. Macro management and security, versioning, distributed access, multidimensionality; all are addressed in a handful of ways with Alpha, Tableau, Looker and other progressive tools. Excel, floppies, line printers; relics.
- noobhacker 9y ago
  I agree 100% that Excel is best for people who aren't going to make the leap#. My point is that domain experts should* make the leap to "real" programming, especially R to handle data analysis. Excel is faster to get started. But for advanced tasks, the time it takes to learn Excel / R is about the same. A big reason why people don't make the leap is because they already spent too much time becoming an Excel expert. Indeed, for young analysts with no baggage, a lot of people learn and use R instead.
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
Have you ever been a power user of Microsoft Excel? And then tried to replicate that functionality in Google Sheets? Or is your aversion mostly to the M- word? I find it funny that when it comes to vi vs emacs (or any such similarly geek-approved thing), fans of each will jump up in arms about the precise reason their platform is better, but the same kind of people would not want to take hundreds of thousands of business professionals at their word about why they like using a particular piece of software.
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Probably because the geeks can consider the virtues of making a spreadsheet vs an application while the office workers are incapable of understanding more than half the equation. Also office workers can't always be trusted to even plug things in let alone properly assess what an optimal solution looks like.
  - vilmosi 9y ago
    Geeks aren't as smart as they think they are. Particularly when it comes to business requirements. I'm guilty of that as much as anyone.
- noobhacker 9y ago
  I come from a data analysis background, and I'm thinking about R / Python as the alternative to Excel, not Google Sheets. People used to use Excel to run regression, visualize data, etc. which I consider inferior to R / Python. I can't speak about other uses of Excel, e.g. financial modeling, insurance.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files Those things. I literally run and pay for Parallels on my Mac for the Windows version of Excel. (Mostly for the keyboard shortcuts.)

TimPC 9y ago

That's a pretty big aside. Like big enough to be a valid reason in and of itself. The other part is performance and interface lag which still tends to be an issue on any reasonable amount of data.

berberous 9y ago

Why use VIM, emacs or Sublime Text, when some online cloud coding platform can probably do the same thing? In addition to the things you mentioned, Excel is an offline, native app, with much more speed and efficiency when dealing with complex or large spreadsheets, IMO.

rb808 9y ago

Excel is a proper gui, Sheets is remarkable achievement in javascript but sucks to use for more than light work. Even editing a few cells in Google Sheets is fiddly.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

En_gr_Student 9y ago

It is called "technical debt" and "organizational momentum". What do you do to stop a few million person-years of investment in a toolset without loss of value? ... usually, nothing much. This is one reason that new OS and new Office versions also raise substantial ire in those same folks. There are semiconductor fabs running most of their machinery on Windows XP for the foreseeable future.

newman8r 9y ago
and don't tell them if their equipment pops up on shodan unless you want an accusatory tone and questions relating to you being a "hacker"

kgwgk 9y ago

VBA, forms, integration with data sources... "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

allenz 9y ago

The main reason is that Excel has features for professionals, but another reason is that some companies don't want Google to have access to their data.

DanBC 9y ago

I love other spreadsheets. I use a few of them. My first was Lotus 123. But Excel is used because it's very very good. Many of the people use it need this one small weird thing, and Excel has it and none of the others do yet. And that one small weird thing is different for everyone. It's a bit scary to see how much stuff is kept going with scary hairballs of VBA and macros and god-knows-what. The EUSPRIG has more information. For example, this about spreadsheets in clinical medicine: http://www.eusprig.org/2006/spreadsheets-in-clinical-medicine-warning.pdf http://www.eusprig.org/2006/spreadsheets-in-clinical-medicin...

IncRnd 9y ago

You can pull in data from other sources, your business data is on your company NAS not unencrypted somewhere in the cloud, Excel is faster for real-world volumes of data, group policy & management functions, etc.

shostack 9y ago

Not sure why you got downvoted as this is a fair question. I use both on a daily basis. Our org is on the Google Apps for Business stack which is why I use Google Sheets, but I'm considering getting us on Office 365 for the collaboration capabilities of Google Sheets paired with the functionality and advanced features of Excel. Simply put, Excel can do way more, is faster, and frankly, takes less time to do things in because I'm deeply familiar with it from years of repetition and troubleshooting. There's also WAAAY more documentation and tutorials available for it when you do encounter a problem.