Category Archive 'Google Cloud Spreadsheets'

One More Reason To Get Office365

Excel 2013, Google Cloud Spreadsheets

As many of you already know, I’m a big fan of moving my data and spreadsheets to the clouds. Over the past few months, I’ve been moving many of my invoices, tax documents and more into my Dropbox account which makes it easier to find, takes up less space in my house and is easy to get rid of when the time comes.

I’ve also started moving a lot of my life to cloud-based documents, either in Office2013 (for files that use macros, specific functions or add-ins such as ycharts. Thus, I now have files that:

-keep a live picture of my investment accounts
-list different things such as travel lists, things to do, etc
-files for work
-all pictures since I’ve moved to digital
-movies and music
-ebooks
-etc

As you can imagine, the cloud is becoming a big part of my life:) That is why I was THRILLED to see the latest change to the Office365 offering. The price remains the same but now comes with 1TB of free cloud-based storage.

1TB = 1000 GB

That is likely more than you’ll need for a long time. You could have hundreds of movies and still not come close to that limit. To give you an idea.

Dropbox charges $9.99/month for 100mb
Google Drive charges $9.99/month for 1TB
Office365/OneDrive charges $9.99/month for 1TB + Microsoft Office

It’s a pretty good deal (free trial from here) and no I’m not being paid by Microsoft to write about this haha:) Although if someone from MSFT wants to send me a check, I’d welcome that!

I’d be very cusious in hearing if you’ve started converting your files to cloud? The vast majority of the Excel users on this blog have not converted to Office365 so I’ll be interested to see if that changes over time.

Google Spreadsheets Moves Closer To Microsoft Excel Capabilities

Google Cloud Spreadsheets

Last week, after publishing my most recent post about Google spreadsheet, I received 5 emails within a few hours from readers that are increasingly using Google docs. I asked them why? Not surprisingly, they said it was mostly the ability to have multiple users at once as well as the free cost. For years, the main drawbacks for Google spreadsheets (when comparing with Excel) has been the lack of advanced functions, macros, etc.

Things Are Changing Quickly

Over the past few months, I’ve published posts about getting financial data into the spreadsheets through the Google finance function, one of many “custom” functions.

Then last week I discussed the use of scripts to build “vba-like” functions

Today, I wanted to discuss some of the changes in the new version of Google spreadsheets that is being rolled out:

-Offline working: This is GREAT. Yes, I love working online and will always do so when possible. But the ability to work on my docs when offline is a major benefit. Yes, you need to use Chrome as your browser but that is what I always use anyway.
-Improved Formula Editing: This makes it easier to work with functions in a similar way to what Excel offers
-New Functions: They added functions such as “Sumif”, “Countif”, “AverageIf”… ring any bells?
-Filter views: I will need to experiment with this but it does look promising

Many other things were improved/upgraded and added.

Clearly, Google Spreadsheets always was an alternative to Excel but as time goes by, it’s clearer that the spreadsheets are quickly catching up to MS Excel. It’s still lacking many different functions but the gap is shrinking.

If you are not yet using Google Docs, I’d love to hear why, and if you are, could you imagine moving away from Excel at some point? I’m far from that point but I would say that I spend as much time in Google spreadsheets as I do in Excel now…!

Do Google Docs Scripts = MS Excel VBA?

Excel macros, Google Cloud Spreadsheets

There are many benefits to using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Excel which I’ve certainly discussed on this blog but one big downside in my opinion is/was the lack of complexity of Google docs. I run several excel spreadsheets that use complex functions, macros, etc.

Google Docs Scripts Could Be The Way Forward?

Google does offer ways to add complexity through “scripts” which I had heard about but had never used. I then ended up looking for ways to get the latest price of “Bitcoins” and while there were ways to do it with a simple formula, I did see a script which looked interesting so I decided to give it a try. I’ll tell you how step by step.

Step #1-Create A new spreadsheet

Step #2-Name a cell (this specific script would add the Bitcoin value into a specific cell so I needed to name a cell:

Step #3-Create A Script

Step #4-Run The Script

Voila! You can see the value here:

This is certainly interesting and I’ll without a doubt be reading up on these and trying several more. I doubt I’ll get rid of Excel anytime soon but if I’m able to move some of my spreadsheets, I’d be thrilled.

One big challenge that I expect is that I’ll certainly have a lot more trouble finding info about Google Doc scripts than Excel VBA.

Have any of you tried Google Docs scripts? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

How To Add Exchange Rates In Google Docs

Google Cloud Spreadsheets

As many of you know, I now have all of my investments in one Google docs spreadsheet. I used to do this in Excel but over time found Google docs both easier to do and also available from any location. One of the few things that I was manually updating was the exchange rate (I do hold both some Canada and US listed stocks. I did a bit of research and it’s actually fairly easy to do:

=GoogleFinance(“CURRENCY:USDCAD” ; “average”)

Easy enough? Now I only need to manually update my document when I receive dividends:)

Do any of you use Google docs to keep up-to-date with your investments?

Building Charts In Google Doc Spreadsheets

Google Cloud Spreadsheets

One of the very interesting things that is possible in Google docs is the ability to create spreadsheets that are easy to view from any location and also possible to share.

I was looking to graph my running in a spreadsheet and initially was going to do it in Excel but then I thought about 2 factors:

-I wanted to be able to update it from my phone, office and home
-I wanted to share the info with my wife and a few friends

That made using a cloud based software the only real solution. I did consider going with Excel but even though it’s gotten much better, it remmains more difficult to use on all kinds of devices such as a smartphone, etc. So in the end, I went towards a Google Doc Spreadsheet. The first step was easy, I entered my monthly totals for the past 3 years:

Then, I simply added a couple of charts:

I then tried a different chart by clicking on “more” to get to this view

I personally felt like this was a much better look:

Here is my final result: