Google Slides vs. Microsoft Excel

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Slides
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Slides is a presentation tool that enables users to create, edit, collaborate, and present. It is free for personal use, and available to businesses via a Google Workspaces subscription.N/A
Microsoft Excel
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application available as part of Microsoft 365 (Office 365), or standalone, in cloud-based and on-premise editions.
$6.99
per month
Pricing
Google SlidesMicrosoft Excel
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Excel with Microsoft 365
$6.99
per month
Excel for 1 PC or Mac
$139.99
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google SlidesMicrosoft Excel
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google SlidesMicrosoft Excel
Considered Both Products
Google Slides
Chose Google Slides
Canva is my choice for creating creative, unique, professional presentations, as they have a built-in library with icons, elements, charts, and graphics. It's easier to create beautiful charts and graphs on Canvas, but more advanced data may be better set up in Google Sheets
Microsoft Excel
Chose Microsoft Excel
Like I've put in previous questions, Microsoft Excel seems more advanced. I'm always going to prefer using Microsoft Excel if it's just me working on a task. If I have to work with other then Google Sheets is going to be preferred. The online version of Microsoft Excel seems to …
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Google SlidesMicrosoft Excel
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User Ratings
Google SlidesMicrosoft Excel
Likelihood to Recommend
6.8
(8 ratings)
9.3
(76 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.8
(7 ratings)
Usability
6.9
(4 ratings)
8.4
(22 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google SlidesMicrosoft Excel
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Well-suited to working on presentations or PowerPoint-style documents, including setting up templated slides and working collaboratively on presentations. It's less well-suited to setting up printable documents, though I have used it for simple printable documents, you just need to remember to set the slide size to A4 (or your preferred paper size) measurements.
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Microsoft
I don't really know another program as powerful as Excel. I've used Google Doc programs but do not feel they come close. So far, anytime I've needed a table of some sort for data, whether it's budget oriented or information off a survey, the best system has been Excel. We do web audits on occasion and we create an Excel worksheet featuring every URL of the pages we're auditing, notes, data about the content, information about files attached to the page and other information to help us determine what pages need updating, deleting or otherwise. We also use Excel primarily to export our Google Analytics to in order for us to create reports for clients that need to see specific information about their traffic.
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Pros
Google
  • Real-time collaboration makes it easy for multiple people to work on one presentation or deck.
  • Sharing is very straight forward, so it's easy to keep control of who can do or can't do.
  • Flexible so it's uses don't stop in presentations.
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Microsoft
  • It is very good at embedded formulas and tying cells to one another
  • It allows me to compare deals terms on a side-by-side basis and talk my clients through it easily.
  • It is very helpful as well in terms of allowing me to filter/sort results in many different ways depending on what specific information I am most interested in prioritizing.
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Cons
Google
  • The slides generated by the "Beautify this slide" feature are not editable. You need to prompt again to make the changes you want.
  • You don't have a way to switch to another company template. For example, if you want to switch from light to dark theme, you can't.
  • The layout of the Animations sequence is not easy to read.
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Microsoft
  • Excel offers collaboration features that allow multiple users to work on the same spreadsheet, but managing changes made by different users can be challenging. Excel could improve its features by offering more granular control, better tracking of changes, and more robust conflict resolution tools.
  • Itcan be a barrier to productivity when importing and exporting data from other applications or file formats. To improve its features, it should offer better support for standard file formats and more robust error handling and reporting tools.
  • Excel can be challenging for finance students and working professionals, but it can be improved by offering more robust tutorials, better documentation, and more user communities and support forums.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
The popularity for Google Slides among the casual technology tool users is so great that we are not in a position to replace this tool with anything else. Every other tool either doesn't have the popularity, or doesn't match the ease of sharing level of Slides. The training needed to learn a different tool is too great. Google Slides is very easy to pick up and master.
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Microsoft
Excel remains the industry standard for spreadsheets and has maintained simple and straight-forward formula writing methods. Although there is a learning curve to do more complex calculations, there are countless help sites and videos on the Internet for almost any need.
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Usability
Google
Google Slides is very easy and intuitive for creating simple, straightforward presentations. Its limitations make for less decision making. Being part of the Google Suite makes for easy sharing and collaboration, auto-saving, and time-stamped versions/edit history. However, unlike a platform like Canva, there's no icon library, photos, graphics, or elements built-in, so if you're wanting more creative designs, you have to import or create yourself.
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Microsoft
I'm giving it a 7 because it is my go to. But the fact other prefer Google Sheets when working with a team does get irritating. I've used the online version of Microsoft Excel that other teams can get into and it still seems behind Google Sheets. It's a little clanky and slow? If that's even a term.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I have rarely, if ever, had issues with its availability.
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Performance
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Excel load and performs calculations immediately. It integrate well with all Microsoft Office applications and does not slow them down.
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Support Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I have not had to use it often, but it is good.
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Alternatives Considered
Google
Google Slides works both online and offline, they are free to use if you have a Google account. Easy to share and are supported by most web browsers. A great addition to your arsenal of interactive educational online platforms.
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Microsoft
Out of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, IBM SPSS, and Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel is by far the most common tool used for anything data-related across organizations. Accordingly, our organization has also implemented Microsoft Excel as a first-step tool. We recently adopted Microsoft Power BI (the free version), and use it occasionally (mostly for creating dashboards), but it is less commonly understood by stakeholders across our organization and by our clients. Accordingly, Microsoft Excel is more user-friendly and because of its popularity, we can easily look up how to do things in the program online. Google Sheets is a comparable alternative to Microsoft Excel, but because it's cloud-based and we have sensitive data that needs to be protected, we chose against using this software. Finally, a few users (including myself) have access to and utilize IBM's SPSS. For my role, it's a helpful tool to do more rigorous analyses. However, because of its cost and limited functionality as a simple spreadsheet, we only use it for more complex analyses.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
N/A I was not involved in this process.
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Scalability
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Each user can use it to whatever level of expertise they have. It remains the same so users can contribute to another's work regardless of whether they have more or less expertise
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Return on Investment
Google
  • We’ve closed all our clients using Google slides.
  • Google slides has directly led to 100's of thousands of dollars in our org.
  • It has helped us add dozens of new clients.
  • Has helped us present information to businesses making 10M+ revenue.
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Microsoft
  • Excel has positively impacted the business as it has increased our efficiency.
  • It also saves us the time that we would have spent on making the calculations that it does for us.
  • Since it works on all devices and is compatible with both Windows and Mac, we do not have to invest in any other alternative.
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ScreenShots