Microsoft Excel versus Google Sheets

In spreadsheets, I have now moved from Microsoft Excel to Google Sheets as my favourite app.

• It is faster to fire up quickly for a small calculation doodle
• It also snappier in use to do the basic things, entering data and moving around
• It has some neat functions (like automatically cutting up a string and putting all words, numbers in subsequent columns)
• While I don't believe in online collaboration of presentations, for models it is actually useful that all the people in the team have access to the laters numbers 24/7
• Filing and naming of presentation documents is usually pretty organised. With spreadsheets however, I always lose that calculation I did, and the Google search function is really helpful here.

Part of this might be rooted in the way I use spreadsheets: basic functions only, even for the biggest models. I "grew up" with Lotus 123 and early on in my McKinsey career realised that errors in a valuation model can make a difference of billions of dollars. A simple model is far easier to debug because it allows you to see every step in the calculation.