Can they finally let me select groups of cells that are not adjacent to each other for charts?
New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
131–140 of 230 posts
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#132I'm at my first company that uses Google apps and it's been a bad experience. There's so much about email and calendaring that Outlook/Exchange got right that it's hard to be without it after taking it for granted. Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Once you're used to real applications, Gmail and the other apps aren't suitable for anything more t…
As a power-excel user I agree with you that Sheets isn't quite there yet. Trying to use the same shortcut keys that I'm used to often makes me want to bang my head against a wall, either because they don't work at all or because even if they do, it's not as responsive. However, the pace of improvement is one that I think you should definitely consider before saying "never." Excel hasn't fundamentally changed for me s…
We use excel with pivot tables to explore data. The previous google sheets had such low limits it was pointless. The new one helpfully says "Sorry, an error occurred when opening this file. Please try again." on trying to open a 40MB uploaded CSV. Back to Excel I guess. I also LibreOffice on my Linux machines, but it is slow, single threaded and harder to use with pivot tables.
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are many powerful, competent, and well-funded entities with a vested interest in improving the web app experience (including Google). I wouldn't claim they're doomed from the start. I've been using gmail for almost 10 years. I liked it from the start. But it's getting worse, not better. It's extremely slow compared to what I'm used to with Exchange and Outlook, and navigating around is more of a chore. How do…
Gmail UI sucks in part because they are going for the masses, not the power user. It isn't HTML5's fault.
Perhaps than they should give the masses their interface and give us a standards-based/compliant JSON interface. We're headed that way already.
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#134I'm at my first company that uses Google apps and it's been a bad experience. There's so much about email and calendaring that Outlook/Exchange got right that it's hard to be without it after taking it for granted. Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Once you're used to real applications, Gmail and the other apps aren't suitable for anything more t…
IMAP?
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#135I'm at my first company that uses Google apps and it's been a bad experience. There's so much about email and calendaring that Outlook/Exchange got right that it's hard to be without it after taking it for granted. Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Once you're used to real applications, Gmail and the other apps aren't suitable for anything more t…
I went from a fully MS Office company, to a different company that used Google Apps, which was recently bought by another company that uses MS Office (that we are now moving to). I've had extensive experience with both products at this point.
===Outlook vs Gmail===
Outlook has a lot of things going for it. One of my main complaints is the functionality difference between the PC and OSX versions of Outlook. Outlook on the Mac just isn't as polished and is missing a number of features that the PC version has. On the plus side of Outlook, it has much more powerful searching/sorting abilities. You can sort messages by a large number of fields. Searching allows you to filter on different fields as well. The big part of searching is that Outlook will do substring searching (gmail will only match on whole words).
Gmail excels at labels and visual presentation. As it is geared towards the basics that a user will need, a lot of data that you just may not care about is hidden away. This makes the bulk of what is important more visible. Also, I feel it presents long email threads in an easier-to-follow manner. Plus, once you learn keybinds in Gmail, it works the same on PC and Mac (which is totally different for Outlook). The other big plus for Gmail is proper handling of HTML. Outlooks HTML engine is pretty atrocious.
Calendars: both are pretty comparable to one another. Outlook is nice as you get desktop alerts even with Outlook closed (google can do this with the 3rd party apps). But Google is nice in that you can set multiple people as being able to edit/update an event, so management of events can be easier.
=== Word vs Docs ===
I'd say the only way Google wins in this is collaboration. Being able to work on the same document with multiple people at the same time is such an amazing feature, I'm sad to lose it. But at the same time, there is so much that Google Docs just can't do. So much advanced formatting, numbering bullets, and layout that it just isn't all that great at. If you just need simple documents, Google Docs can handle it, just don't expect anything too fancy.
=== Excel vs Sheets ===
Sort of the same argument as Word vs Docs. Collaboration is amazing in Sheets, but it misses a lot of advanced functionality and formatting. It's ok for basic stuff, but don't try to do anything to advanced.
Funny enough, in this category I feel Apple's Numbers is a really great tool. The D&D game I'm part of uses a Numbers sheet to handle characters, and one of the big features I like is embedding multiple tables into a single view (something Excel or Sheets can't do).
=== Powerpoint vs Presentation ===
Powerpoint again is similar to the Word vs Docs argument. Collaboration is the one main feature Google wins at. Google Presentation has 2 major issues for me: 1) it doesn't auto-resize text if you go beyond the size of the box (it just overflows). 2) layout of slides can slightly differ between edit view and presentation view, which can be very annoying.
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lack of change tracking just blows me away. It's a killer feature for Docs.
Have you actually used office? It has change tracking, diff and merge and has done for over 10 years. The problem here is network locking which is totally different.
You can TURN ON change tracking (more on that in a moment) in Office applications. It doesn't exist on the web interface of Skydrive at all.
The change tracking in office is nothing at all like the "See Revision History" in Google Docs. The Google Docs one is miles better.
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair enough. This is how I reason to that particular statement. My observation is that the judgment of 'superior' or 'inferior' requires a standard. In the absence of an unbiased exemplar, the first exposure and use becomes the 'default' standard. Further, that exposure tunes the work flow to minimize 'pain' which creates a pattern of behavior that achieves an objective at reduced pain (a trained workflow). On the ex…
Sure, people, including myself, do find the familiar appealing. But you can't extrapolate that to assume that any/most preference for existing standards is based on that instead of an actual understanding of which standard one prefers. It would be equally wrong and cynical for me to discount opinions for imagined reasons like, people who fit a younger or tech-friendly profile latch on to new technologies for the sake…
I don't think I've ever disagreed with a statement that stated "System A is different than System B, and I prefer {A/B} because I find it easier to use." My comment simply disagrees with adding an unqualified ranking to a system. "A is inferior", "B is superior" without some definition of an exemplar. Someone could say "Windows Office is superior to Google Apps when working on documents without network connectivity." That is a ranking, and a basis for the ranking. I can agree or disagree with the choice but I understand it.
To the extent that I could understand it, the OP argument was that it was worse because it was different. And it is that claim I disagree strongly with.
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#138I'm at my first company that uses Google apps and it's been a bad experience. There's so much about email and calendaring that Outlook/Exchange got right that it's hard to be without it after taking it for granted. Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Once you're used to real applications, Gmail and the other apps aren't suitable for anything more t…
I recently went through an acquisition where we transitioned from Google Apps to the Microsoft suite. I do not share your love of Microsoft's suite. Among the many problems I have with the Microsoft suite, Outlook is at the top of my list for generating the most frustration. GMail's priority inbox and new-style inbox where machine learning is used to sort out mail is a productivity booster for me. With Outlook, I reg…
> where machine learning is used to sort out mail
A few minutes spent setting up filters goes a long ways to nullifying the (frequently wrong for me) machine learning advantage in sorting emails.
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use MS Office occasionally at work but even that small amount of usage has me wanting to use Google Docs instead. -Someone has the Excel file open on the network? Oh, read-only for you my friend. Have to save? Better track down whoever has it open. -No revision/change tracking. Have to always be alert as to who is changing what and when. Often simpler just to make a new file and add to the clutter on the network fo…
You're doing it wrong. sharepoint/svn avoids these issues.
"sharepoint/svn avoids these issues"?
Utter fail.
It's like you're telling me to send a TELEGRAM rather than use IRC.
Re: New Google Sheets: faster, more powerful, and works offline
#140I'm at my first company that uses Google apps and it's been a bad experience. There's so much about email and calendaring that Outlook/Exchange got right that it's hard to be without it after taking it for granted. Using a native rich application is always going to be superior to building a web app on top of a browser. Once you're used to real applications, Gmail and the other apps aren't suitable for anything more t…
> I'd prefer that any money my company might be saving be deducted from my paycheck if it would mean they'd get off of Google apps. Sysadmin here. How much are you willing to pay? I'll need at least 2 domain servers, exchange server, backup server/device/nas/tapes, etc to give you a stable and recoverable environment. I'll need an air conditioned server room/closet as well and a decent UPS. We'll need to pay for offs…
There are companies that provide hosting services for Exchange, so there is no need for a local installation.