Hacker News Reader

Comment by pbreit | Hacker News Reader

I haven't used Excel heavily in at least 5 years. Google Sheets is much better in most ways, especially sharing and collaboration.

Google Sheets has a killer feature that few know about: you can attach Apps Script (JavaScript) to a sheet [1] including a "fetch" function to make API calls [2].

While Excel has a show-stopping preposterously ridiculous behavior: auto-converting long number strings to "scientific notation" (and even data loss rounding!!) [3].

1: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets

2: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/url-fetc...

3: https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-...

View on HN

Google sheets also has some large limitations and doesn’t contain anywhere near the feature richness of Excel, so it’s a little tit for tat.

For Power Users of excel, google sheets misses the following:

* Inability to import large datasets - number of cells limit is much smaller and there is no ability to support larger datasets (eg powerquery in excel). This means while sheets can typically handle 100k rows (with 10 columns), excel can handle well over 10 million (with hundreds of columns).

* No dynamic array formulas - in google sheets they are all “drag down” while in excel formulas can be created which expand/shrink according to the data

* No ability to handle relationships and measures - Excel has the capability to define relationships between data similar to a relational DB allowing for more powerful querying.

* You can’t send a google sheet on email - important for big companies!

In terms of a JavaScript API - excel has one for their web app (also called app script!), it’s just not supported on their desktop app yet (although this is being planned).

> You can’t send a google sheet on email - important for big companies!

Why send an Excel via mail? If you make changes, you have to send the file again and you can't collaborate with others.

That's what the share function in Google Sheets is for :) If that doesn't work, you can still download the file as .xlsx and send it via mail.

You've been able to share Excel Sheets online for a while now...

Then my point still stands, why the need to send Excel files via mail? :)

So that they can use it without having to request access.

Because it’s easy, convenient and an accepted standard in business. Many orgs also have policies that disallow direct sharing outside the org, or are blocked from using google docs, but all these people can receive an excel file on email.

Well Excel has VBA which makes your API calls mute bud.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com