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I only use Google Sheets

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Re: I only use Google Sheets

#61

Post by wiether »

coffeefirst wrote: post #39
sjw987 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell whether I'm being super paranoid but I've been burned by Google so many times on product sunsets that I've just removed all of my data from them. I managed to set up private self-hosted versions of an email client, photo viewing app, and barebones alternative to Docs and Sheets. Switched from Google to Kagi, and Chrome to Brave, but generally keep my own bookmarks of sites to use rather than using search…

What’s your Docs and Sheets alternative? I’ve looked, I’ve never found anything that seems to both cover all the bases and not feel like a bad Microsoft clone.

Through my kDrive subscription, I get access to their own instance of OnlyOffice

It looks a bit dated like MS Office, but it does the job and since it used MS Office formats, I can edit the documents with Libre Office or other sofwares. And using the API, I can programatically access those files.

https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite/kdrive

https://www.onlyoffice.com/

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#62

Post by crazygringo »

dvh wrote: post #7

I haven't used Google sheets for maybe 2 years, didn't have the need, but week ago I needed to send customer a table that will be updated every couple of days. I was surprised how slow it is. Table has 40 lines and 8 columns, static text only, and it takes 12s until I can edit it. For what it is (adding sentence every 3 day) it's ok but if I had to actually use it for myself on a daily basis it would drive me mad.

It should be lightning fast for what you're describing.

All I can guess is you have some browser extension interfering? Maybe one that is blocking certain calls Google uses and the sheet doesn't load until they time out?

If you're running an adblocker or blocking trackers or anything like that, try disabling those to see if that makes a difference. Otherwise check the network tab of the dev console to see what seems to be slow.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#64

Post by bluGill »

corry wrote: post #59

Always overlooked point in these pro/anti-spreadsheet discussions: A spreadsheet gives you a DB, a quickly and easily customized UI, and iterative / easy-to-debug data processing all in a package that everyone in the working world already understands. AND with a freedom that allows the creator to do it however they want. AND it's fairly portable. You can build incredible things in spreadsheets. I remain convinced tha…

I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend. Most of what people do with a spreadsheet would be better done in a database - but a database needs a lot more training to use (if you don't have the training you will make something worse than spreadsheet with your database!)

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#65

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

hn-ifs wrote: post #38

I suppose the issue here is trusting Google with your personal and business data. Mining that information for targeting advertising aside, it's not unheard of Google locking people out of their accounts with no reasons or obvious recourse. I wonder what the best non-mega corp solution there is for this.

Cryptpad comes to my mind although I suppose it might lack some features of google sheets but it has a web interface.

For a non web interface, things like libreoffice can be good too but I think that you are asking for a web version..

I am not sure if libreoffice has a web version, it seems that they do but I can't find much information and I might recommend crytpad personally so.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#66

Post by Cthulhu_ »

bluGill wrote: post #64
corry wrote: post #59

Always overlooked point in these pro/anti-spreadsheet discussions: A spreadsheet gives you a DB, a quickly and easily customized UI, and iterative / easy-to-debug data processing all in a package that everyone in the working world already understands. AND with a freedom that allows the creator to do it however they want. AND it's fairly portable. You can build incredible things in spreadsheets. I remain convinced tha…

I wish there was a better way to make spreadsheets use a database as a backend. Most of what people do with a spreadsheet would be better done in a database - but a database needs a lot more training to use (if you don't have the training you will make something worse than spreadsheet with your database!)

Wasn't Microsoft Access basically that? There's also Google's AppSheet, which may be that too.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#67

Post by GuB-42 »

Aachen wrote: post #31
TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

I keep telling people to make backups of "cloud" services ever since Grooveshark died from one day to the next Maybe Spotify won't be taken down overnight, but they can lock me out for various reasons such as misdetecting an IP address (Google wouldn't let me log in at all when they thought I was in Russia, when I was at 31C3 in Hamburg, Germany, a conference where they afaik use some temporary IP space — I don't kno…

> I keep telling people to make backups of "cloud" services

The usual rule when making backups is that you need 3 copies, one of them offsite. A cloud storage service counts as an offsite copy, but you still need two more, typically one on your computer and one in cold storage (ex: external hard drive).

Treat cloud storage like you treat your hard drive, it can fail at any time. The failure modes are different: mechanical failure vs losing access to your account, but the end result is the same: the system is unreliable and you have to engineer around it.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#68

Post by floundy »

sjw987 wrote: post #34
TrackerFF wrote: post #22

One thing I've learned: Never ( ever ) make yourself reliant/dependent on Google products. If you do get banned / locked out, it is the most AI-Kafkaesque process imaginable to regain access. And you could stay locked out for years. I use Google sheets myself from time to time, but I regularly do backups of the sheets I'm working on, or anything important I have access to. I've been in the hole before, for reasons I…

I can't tell whether I'm being super paranoid but I've been burned by Google so many times on product sunsets that I've just removed all of my data from them. I managed to set up private self-hosted versions of an email client, photo viewing app, and barebones alternative to Docs and Sheets. Switched from Google to Kagi, and Chrome to Brave, but generally keep my own bookmarks of sites to use rather than using search…

I'm working on De-Googling. I now have a Mac and an iPhone instead of Windows/Android, but switching from Drive to iCloud seems a fairly parallel move.

I also set up my first home server with RAID NAS. It's on my list to spin up an OpenOffice container or something I can use to replace Google Sheets. That will let me delete my Drive data; next is Google Photos and eventually Gmail.

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#69

Post by sixhobbits »

Same, I currently have

- My own rough business accounting (download all bank statements and do some pivots and graphing. Real accountants do the real thing, but I like to have a version that makes sense to me and that is up to date)

- Personal accounting finance tracking for sharing expenses and tracking living costs over time

- Consolidated asset tracking across different projects/accounts etc, just a quick summary that's not perfect but spending 10 minutes a month manually updating it helps keep it in my head too.

- A lot of project management (we also have real PM tools, but I keep my own sheets because it's easy and it makes sense to me)

- A bunch of quick analytics (I also use metabase, but sometimes it's just faster to create a graph in sheets)

Most of the time the sheet is not the _main_ tool I use, but it is the easiest and most useful one, while the others have better integrations, safety mechanisms (I often end up with +500 or whatever in a copy-paste formula error and sometimes don't catch it), and collaborative measures (if you have 2+ people editing the same sheet you're usually going to have a bad time)

Re: I only use Google Sheets

#70

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mixcocam wrote: post #24

"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that cr…

Anecdotal, my previous employer had a contract once for a gas storage / exchange, for years their whole business relied on an Excel sheet (basically tracking gas storage transactions from various customers). I don't remember why but they decided to migrate that to a proper application, I think it took a full development team two years to build in all.

But it's likely that, as these things go, they added much more features and visualizations on top instead of just a like-for-like replacement.

TL;DR that company was bootstrapped successfully on just a spreadsheet.

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