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
Smartsheet
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Smartsheet is an online project management and collaboration tool. It includes automated alerts, instantaneous updating and sharing across team members, resource management, nested tasks organized in a hierarchy, a Gantt chart view, exportable and automated reports, and integration with email.
Excel will always be selected because it's part of the Office Suite. We started to use Smartsheet, but the onboarding and training process took too long when compounded with licensing setup & costs. Apple Numbers works well, but without the maturity of Excel. Since Apple …
Excel has a greater capability of making the sheet look like anything I want. The aspect missing is the ability to report similar text statistics across multiple sheets with ease. I prefer Excel when tracking data.
While other products have been useful for being easily sharable or free, Microsoft Excel handles more data with easier to use functions, pivot tables, graphing, and formulas than all that I have used. Google Sheets is a close second but has not been able to handle the large …
Microsoft Excel users have appreciated its flexibility for a variety of applications. As highlighted by reviewers, Excel has been widely used for data analysis, budgeting, creating charts, project management, among other tasks in both professional and academic settings. Users have found its functionalities, such as formulas, pivot tables, and macros, to be very powerful for dealing with large data sets and complex computations.
On the other hand, customers have cited Smartsheet as an ideal tool for project management, team collaboration and work tracking. According to user reviews, Smartsheet has been extensively used for scheduling, planning, tracking project timelines, resource allocation and more. It has been noted by users for its real-time collaboration, workflow automation, and integrations with other tools, which have especially benefited teams working remotely.
In comparison, Excel and Smartsheet serve somewhat similar use cases, but with different focuses. One striking difference from user feedback is the collaborative nature of Smartsheet, which seems to be more suited for real-time teamwork as compared to Excel. Yet, Excel’s powerful capabilities for handling large data sets and complex calculations have been brought to light, making it more suitable for in-depth data analysis tasks. Thus, user preference seems to heavily depend upon the specific needs and use-cases.
Features
Microsoft Excel
Smartsheet
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Smartsheet
7.7
124 Ratings
3% above category average
Task Management
00 Ratings
8.4121 Ratings
Resource Management
00 Ratings
8.8103 Ratings
Gantt Charts
00 Ratings
8.1104 Ratings
Scheduling
00 Ratings
8.5106 Ratings
Workflow Automation
00 Ratings
8.295 Ratings
Team Collaboration
00 Ratings
8.4117 Ratings
Support for Agile Methodology
00 Ratings
8.377 Ratings
Support for Waterfall Methodology
00 Ratings
5.675 Ratings
Document Management
00 Ratings
6.596 Ratings
Email integration
00 Ratings
7.995 Ratings
Mobile Access
00 Ratings
7.491 Ratings
Timesheet Tracking
00 Ratings
6.158 Ratings
Change request and Case Management
00 Ratings
8.064 Ratings
Budget and Expense Management
00 Ratings
8.070 Ratings
Professional Services Automation
Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Product A and Product B
For tasks like financial analysis, budgeting, forecasting, and data visualization, I frequently use Microsoft Excel. I can develop financial models, use pivot tables to examine enormous datasets, and produce eye-catching visualizations thanks to its comprehensive features. I have, however, also come across circumstances in which Excel isn't the best tool.Excel falls short of alternatives like Google Sheets when I need to collaborate with my team in real-time. I favor employing robust database management systems or data analysis tools like SQL, Python, or R for managing very big data sets or sophisticated calculations. I use specialized tools like SPSS, SAS, or programming languages for better outcomes when complex statistical analysis or machine learning are necessary. And finally, for formatting elaborate reports, In conclusion, even though I consider Excel to be a great tool for many finance jobs, there are some limits in collaborating, processing big amounts of data, performing complex analysis, and creating documents that I take into account when choosing the best tool for the job.
For teams and users who are very familiar with Excel and its mode of operation, Smartsheet will feel like a walkover. If you have a number of users who use Excel or Google Sheets for their personal project management then you will find this tool to be very useful and somewhat familiar.
Teams that may be used to other project management suites or styles would find Smartsheet a bit challenging to adapt to, as formulas and formatting can be challenging to adapt to.
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.
Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency
It comes with MS Office. Unless we stop using PCs or Microsoft Office, it's highly unlikely, even imperceivable to not continue to use Excel. It would be nice to see more Excel functions used, though, beside basic tables and calculations.
It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.
Microsoft excel stands out in its User Interface as compared to any other software which offers same functionality. It can be used by a beginner as well as the expert in the same field. It is having many features as we dig deep in it like advance functions, dynamic arrays, pivot, VBA and Macros.
Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions
I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.
It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.
We utilize Tableau and Alteryx in addition to Excel. We use Excel since we have a data dump that could be utilized in feeding for these two solutions. We select Excel for some manual work then plug the data into the other two tools for further analysis around text analytics like word clouds in Tableau, or text mining in Alteryx. Excel is an input data source that we use in conjunction with these two.
Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!
