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Spreadsheet Macros and Pivot Tables: Google Says No. EditGrid Says No. Zoho Just Does It.

Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS April 28th, 2008

OK, OK, I admit, the title is a bit tongue-in-cheek… but real. Sophisticated Excel users have long complained that none of the online spreadsheets support Macros or Pivot Tables. The answer has so far been sorry, no can do…

Google hinted they would likely not do it, as reported by TechCrunch:

Will Google Spreadsheets ever have advanced features like pivot tables, macros or offline database integrations? (This was actually my question) Scott said they are constantly trying to find the balance between speed and utility. It will never be a heavy duty analytics program because that would be too heavy and bulky for the average user.

EditGrid’s David Lee also suggested Pivot Table are too difficult to do online. Well, maybe, but here they are both, in Zoho Sheet. Not that it comes a real surprise, in fact ever since the launch of Zoho DB pivot tables were just a matter of time, and Zoho has promised macros for some time, too.

I admit I probably don’t appreciate the importance of these two features, as I’ve said before, the level of my spreadsheet competency is probably stuck somewhere at Lotus 1-2-3. smile_wink . But even I used very limited Excel macros in the past, although typically be recording and editing afterward, rather than writing them in Visual Basic. Now Zoho Sheet can interpret VB directly, without using Microsoft’s back-end, and that means you can import your Excel spreadsheet, the macros no longer die. No other spreadsheet (other than Excel itself) supports VB macros.

Zoho launched a “marketplace” -sort of, being free - of VB macros at http://vbmacros.wiki.zoho.com/

As for pivot tables, they are an important analytical tool, but instead of reading me, why don’t you look at this demo video:

Tags: editgrid, Google, Microsoft Excel, Visual Basic, zoho, zoho db, zoho sheet

3 Comments

Web Forms Gain Popularity

Collaboration, SaaS, Startups February 7th, 2008

Web forms are increasingly popular, as they provide an easy way to solicit user input, manage a database in the background, and display data in a controlled form. Typical uses are contact forms (this blog has one), surveys, signup-sheets. Wufoo is perhaps the most popular standalone form builder, but as popular as they are, Google’s entry to the space will likely bring more visibility to Web form use cases.

I set up a very rudimentary web form to demonstrate their use, but I am cheating: I took the data from Google Operating System and populated my database - sorry, Ionut, I don’t get anywhere close to your huge reader base. smile_wink Please fill out the form below.

Although the form captures the time of entry, I am not displaying it below, to demonstrate that once can control the re-use of data after user entry.

You can manipulate the above data, filter it, sort it by clicking on the column headers, search the contents…etc.

Oh… is this more than you’ve seen on the other Google forms? And they’ve told you the lists were not embeddable? Sorry .. I’m cheating: I’ve re-created Ionut’s form in Zoho Creator. smile_tongue (Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho - but I am making a point by doing this.)

Different people will always prefer different tools. I don’t have any statistics, but I would assume the number of users for database-like tools (MS Access, Dabble DB, Zoho Creator & DB) is by an order of magnitude less than the number of spreadsheet users. A lot of basic spreadsheet users don’t perform calculations, don’t use pivot tables - they just create tables to track lists. (See my earlier rant on why JotSpot’s tracker is not a real spreadsheet). For their sake it’s nice to be able to have simple form support inside a spreadsheet, which is what they can now get from Google.

Several reviewers of the new Google Forms were missing field verification, calculated numeric fields…etc. These features and more are supported in Zoho Creator, which in fact allows you to build mini-apps by dropping script elements, without actually coding. Those who want more database manipulation can use Zoho DB. These are powerful applications, but which one to use when can be confusing to less technically inclined users (like yours truly). Hence simple forms in a spreadsheet are a good idea. But let me dream a little - here’s how I’d like to see web-based collaboration some day:

It won’t be about formats and applications - it will be about free-flowing thoughts and the data encapsulating them. Of course there will be differences in application capabilities, but it’s entirely likely that what you can manipulate in your database application, I will access using a spreadsheet. Likewise, I may write something in a wiki, and you want to edit it in an online word processor. It’s not a dream, we’re heading that way. For example Zoho’s wiki and Writer apps share a basically similar editor, Zoho DB introduced pivot tables which will show up in Sheet in the near future. I am impatient, would like to see this sharing happen faster, but have to accept the realities of how the leading Web companies work: individual products first, integration later. But we’ll get there… to the vision of format-less web-collaboration.

Oh, and until then, Welcome ~~Creator Mini~~ Google Forms. smile_teeth