Where can I find info on pros and cons of exc...

Dialect_Junk · 12-30-2017 04:00 PM

Where can I find info on pros and cons of excel vs. sheets in AppSheet? Limitations, benefits, etc. Thank you!

Harry2

@Dialect_Junk Many of our users use Excel sheets because they and their teams have already been using and storing data in OneDrive or Office 365. One significant advantage of Excel is that you can take advantage of other products and features in the Microsoft business applications ecosystem. However, the biggest drawback when working with Excel using AppSheet is that you cannot edit an Excel file directly while an AppSheet app is writing to the file. If an app attempts to edit an Excel sheet while the sheet is opened in edit mode, an error will occur. As a result, it can be quite inconvenient to use the app if other members in the team frequently edit the Excel sheet directly.

The biggest advantage of Google Sheet is that it is free. Also, Google Sheet is actually very similar to Excel, and have a lot of similar functions, which makes it very easy to learn how to use if you are already familiar with Excel. Another big advantage of Google Sheet is that you can write your own custom scripts that can perform regular data update or collection tasks in your sheets. Finally, we have observed that our system works most reliably with Google Sheet, and is most compatible with Google Drive file system. In terms of performance, except for dedicated database such as MySQL or SQLServer, AppSheet has the best performance when working with Google sheets.

Harry2

@Stephen_Mattison Thanks for spotting the mistake, I’ve fixed it.

Dialect_Junk

Thank you for the excellent info! That was great!

JanG

This topic 2 years old, so I am sure there must be some new input to it? We are in process of moving from Google Sheet to Excel, as we use it in general. And we use Power BI which works easier with Excel, so hope to make better analysis of the AppSheet Data.

Any smart ways to recreate the tables in Excel or is it manually one-by-one, field-by-field copying fomulas and setup over? As I don’t see it possible to change the table-source directly, unless I’m mistaken?

Appreciate any thoughts or inspiration?

Bahbus

I think you can export your current Google Sheets as an Excel file. And as long as you aren’t changing where you files are stored, you can change the which file AppSheet points to for its information in the Data>Table tab. See my example:

As long as there is nothing in the Google Sheet that breaks when exported to Excel, you should be able to do this seamlessly.

However, if you are also changing where the files are stored (Google Drive -> OneDrive) then you’ll need to do even more work. I believe you’ll need to fully delete the table from the AppSheet and recreate it pointing to the new file on the new source. This will be more troublesome. The support people might be able to help make it easier, but I am unsure about it as I have never gone through it.

JanG

Thanks, @Bahbus, very much appreciated! OK, clear so far. Unfortunately, yes, I am also moving file to OneDrive. So that then seems to be the main hurdle. Anyone else got ideas on how to do this?

Bahbus

I would email support@appsheet.com to see if they can help change the source without deleting/recreating the table. Not sure if they can, but if it’s at all possible, they’d be the ones.

Steve

JanG

Thanks, @Steve! Did do several search before my posting but did not come across this with the search words I used.

First documents title Moving Apps Between Data Providers looked very intriguing but the content seems to me only about transfering Author. So maybe I misunderstand the purpose of this document.

I think I found the answer in Migrating Apps Between SQL Databases which actually states same as @Bahbus points out: simply just change the sourcepath in each table and it will give the option to have a different datasource e.g. Office365 in my case.

I have tested on a simple sample app and seems to work. Just download your google sheet with all data to Excel. Place it on OneDrive. And thereafter go into the app and change sourcepaths.

Did not move my App yet, as I capture and got pictures in it, so I will have a more carefull look at this part which is mentioned in the Moving Apps…-document. I.e. same relative to the location of the spreadsheet as where it is today. And move the Image-folder over.