Cool idea! Clean and simple UI.
Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
61–70 of 97 posts
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#62I'm surprised MS Office development seems to have just...stopped. Powerpoint can't import an SVG (it turns it into a low res raster image). Powerpoint can't export SVG either, if I want to use a Powerpoint diagram in a web page. I opened a JSON file in Excel expecting to see nested values and nope, it doesn't support that file format. Office isn't even available in the Windows app store. When Microsoft's going full s…
Has it stopped, or are you maybe not the target/average user? Most Office users have no idea what SVG or JSON files are or why they'd use them. My experience is that Office has prioritized usability and automating tedious tasks, like theming, creating charts, and linking data back and forth. Every major version over the last 15 years has made some large usability improvements (e.g. format painter), but perhaps you'd…
Every major version over the last 15 years has made some very minor usability improvements and added as many regressions.
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#63Not necessarily exactly like this but Google Sheet does web publishing of sheets.
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has it stopped, or are you maybe not the target/average user? Most Office users have no idea what SVG or JSON files are or why they'd use them. My experience is that Office has prioritized usability and automating tedious tasks, like theming, creating charts, and linking data back and forth. Every major version over the last 15 years has made some large usability improvements (e.g. format painter), but perhaps you'd…
Every major version over the last 15 years has made some very minor usability improvements and added as many regressions .
I wholeheartedly disagree. The usability improvements have been major for me, and I can't think of any regressions.
Again, I think Microsoft has to (and is doing arguably well at) focusing on the lowest common denominator of users.
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has it stopped, or are you maybe not the target/average user? Most Office users have no idea what SVG or JSON files are or why they'd use them. My experience is that Office has prioritized usability and automating tedious tasks, like theming, creating charts, and linking data back and forth. Every major version over the last 15 years has made some large usability improvements (e.g. format painter), but perhaps you'd…
A lot of people who work with data use Excel and JSON. Not most Excel users, but about as many as who know what VLOOKUP is.
Excel is huge in finance, accounting, and marketing. I don't know why anyone in those fields would routinely use JSON files.
If there's JSON somewhere that's relevant, a dev will usually just change output to CSV or something.
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#66This looks sleek and well-made! However, this is a pretty crowded space. Spreadsheet Converter ( https://www.spreadsheetconverter.com ) and Spreadsheet Web ( https://www.spreadsheetweb.com ) are directly comparable and have been around for years. (Like Publisheet, Spreadsheet Converter offers an Excel add-in.) Then there are lots of web app builders, including Calculoid ( https://www.calculoid.com ), Calconic ( https…
When I started Publisheet, the idea was that it would allow users to create static, web-based reports from their spreadsheets, including textual information that would be written as Markdown (with a WYSIWYG editor) directly in one or more cells. I thought that it would be an easy way to create complete financial reports, for instance. The landing page's images still reflect that. But as soon as it launched, I noticed…
Interesting pivot; thanks for sharing that context. Did you get a chance to interview some of your customers to learn more about why the report-based workflow wasn't interesting to them? While spreadsheets can be used for narratives, they aren't exactly the best medium for them because of their multi-dimensional nature.
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#67This looks sleek and well-made! However, this is a pretty crowded space. Spreadsheet Converter ( https://www.spreadsheetconverter.com ) and Spreadsheet Web ( https://www.spreadsheetweb.com ) are directly comparable and have been around for years. (Like Publisheet, Spreadsheet Converter offers an Excel add-in.) Then there are lots of web app builders, including Calculoid ( https://www.calculoid.com ), Calconic ( https…
When I started Publisheet, the idea was that it would allow users to create static, web-based reports from their spreadsheets, including textual information that would be written as Markdown (with a WYSIWYG editor) directly in one or more cells. I thought that it would be an easy way to create complete financial reports, for instance. The landing page's images still reflect that. But as soon as it launched, I noticed…
> including textual information that would be written as Markdown (with a WYSIWYG editor) directly in one or more cells. I thought that it would be an easy way to create complete financial reports, for instance. The landing page's images still reflect that.
> But as soon as it launched, I noticed that no one was using it for text-heavy reports.
I think the issue with that approach is that text-heavy reports don't perfectly overlap with the web. Speaking for basically all Wall St investment bankers out there, we spend our days generating reports from Excel into PowerPoint.
If something existed for Excel + PowerPoint that worked similarly to RMarkdown + Rstudio > PDF, I think it would be a game changer, even if only used to generate a few of the more "automated" reports.
There you go, free killer business idea for you ;-)
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#68This looks sleek and well-made! However, this is a pretty crowded space. Spreadsheet Converter ( https://www.spreadsheetconverter.com ) and Spreadsheet Web ( https://www.spreadsheetweb.com ) are directly comparable and have been around for years. (Like Publisheet, Spreadsheet Converter offers an Excel add-in.) Then there are lots of web app builders, including Calculoid ( https://www.calculoid.com ), Calconic ( https…
When I started Publisheet, the idea was that it would allow users to create static, web-based reports from their spreadsheets, including textual information that would be written as Markdown (with a WYSIWYG editor) directly in one or more cells. I thought that it would be an easy way to create complete financial reports, for instance. The landing page's images still reflect that. But as soon as it launched, I noticed…
Kudos to your product!
I would worry about competition. If there are already well established players, you have market share to steal from them (but I’m guessing you’re aware of that).
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people who work with data use Excel and JSON. Not most Excel users, but about as many as who know what VLOOKUP is.
Just out of curiousity, who uses JSON in excel and why? (I work in corp finance, and use excel extensively)
Nobody, because it doesn't support JSON. I think you've misread the comment you're replying to.
Re: Show HN: Publisheet – Publish Excel sheets as interactive web pages
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't mean that there's been no changes to office. Rather that office hasn't kept up with the modern habits. Office is a world when vector graphics are in EPS, people don't want to re use diagrams in web pages, and app stores aren't mainstream. Office having adopted tabbed toolbars in 2007 doesn't change that.
You imply that exporting things to svg is “modern habit”, but it’s just a tribal ceremony of your specific tribe.
Not saying everyone does it, but wanting to show your chart in a web page isn't particularly unusual.