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. 
. 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
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