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Google Sheets actually has a ton of Excel compatible functions; wish the User Experience was better though

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/04/14

I have been using Microsoft Excel since it beat the Quattro Pro limitation of rows and columns with the version 12.0, on Windows more commonly named Excel 2007 (which also introduced a fully new user experience including the vertical screen estate eating Ribbon – the main reason I like 16:10 monitors over 16:9 ones) and on Mac as Excel 2008.

It means I have like 20 years of Excel experience not just on what it can technically can do (see my Excel posts) but especially on the user experience bit.

Google Sheets is lacking on the latter, which makes it way more time consuming on the latter, but on the former, it has a lot of functions.

Another big difference is separate formatting for time duration, otherwise adding time stamps will give very strange results.

For this little example that I shared with a wind orchestra for planning purposes earlier this year: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zlKTP9nlhF04bQIQJBBDxnVMz9pzl9sxm9o-5sBL9FQ/view.

The functions and formatting used there:

Since [Wayback/Archive] The Best Way to Add or Subtract Time In Google Sheets (without Functions) – YouTube (which is now a private video) failed for me in the sense that it had overflow and formatting issues, I went with the SUM and SUMIF functions which worked fine. Not sure what I did wrong, but hey (:

Queries:

Related blog posts:

--jeroen

This entry was posted on 2026/04/14 at 18:00 and is filed under Development, Excel, Google, GoogleDocs, GoogleSheets, Office, Office 2007, Power User, Software Development, User Experience (ux). Tagged: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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