Online Spreadsheet Observations

Updated 6/26/08

I am totally sold on running all my spreadsheets "in the cloud", which means running them on Google Docs or Zoho Sheets. Which one do I recommend? I'm afraid I use both of them, with the choice depending upon specific things I'm doing. Neither does everything I want. However, both are evolving very quickly and I expect that someday I'll lock in on one. What follows is a list of factors that caused me to choose one or the other for specific spreadsheets. Note that as both products evolve, my reasons for choosing one over the other may disappear. My rule of thumb is this: Zoho Sheets is more powerful, but Google's spreadsheets are easier to use.

Computational Limits

I've run into Google's "max number of computations" limit, so my more intense spreadsheets live on Zoho. I haven't encountered any limits in Zoho Sheets.

Keyboard Navigation

Both do a good job with keyboard shortcuts, but Zoho offers a "Goto" keyboard shortcut. It includes the ability to go to a named range.

Column Headings

For big spreadsheets, I find it very useful to have fixed column heading, i.e. scrolling down the spreadsheet leaves the top row visible. Google support this; Zoho doesn't.

Pivot Tables

If you need them, nothing else will do. Zoho has them; Google doesn't. NOTE: Firefox 3 seems to have killed this capability for now.

Sorting

Both products have good sorting capabilities, but Google offers a nice "easy sort" which is handy if you need to view the same data sorted by different columns. Zoho offers more powerful multi-column sorting.

Sharing

I created some Google spreadsheets because of the ease of sharing with someone with a Gmail account. Now Zoho has made it equally easy for Gmail users to use Zoho without getting a unique Zoho id and password. Even better, it works for people with Yahoo accounts as well. If sharing is important, Zoho looks like the better bet.

VBA

Zoho supports a limited version of VBA. Google doesn't.

Document Management

Google's approach to managing multiple documents is cleaner than Zoho's. Also, with Firefox 3, it's trivial to jump straight into a Google spreadsheet without extra navigation.

Bugs

I have some spreadsheets in Zoho because Google couldn't import them. I have some spreadsheets in Zoho because of bugs in Google! I'm sure most of these bugs are fixed, but it's not worth moving the spreadsheets around.