Let’s get ready to ruuuummmmmblllllle! We’re going to battle until the last spreadsheet software is standing! Okay, not really. But, isn't that an exciting way to start anything!?

In this episode, we introduce our latest, regular podcast contributor, Art Gelwicks of The Idea Pump, to ProductivityCast. We’re excited to now have Francis and Art join us going forward and really increase the value of diverse productivity perspectives and knowledge. We each come at the world of personal productivity from different angles and backgrounds, and we believe that strengthens our ability on ProductivityCast to get to universal axioms as well as the deeper discussions of differences in personalities and workflows, from which you, our listeners, will benefit.

So, let’s get on with the discussion about the pro’s and con’s of the most popular spreadsheet software--and their productive uses!

Enjoy! Give us feedback! We love to hear from you and send your questions and suggestions. And, thanks for listening!

If you'd like to discuss this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Show Notes

Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Early history of Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel

Google Sheets

Apple Numbers

LibreOffice Calc

SharePoint

Microsoft Access

G Suite ← this is a free 30-day trial of G Suite for new accounts (Thank Ray, Google Small Business Advisor - Productivity! ;-)

Getting Things Done in Google Sheets / Excel (template and video tutorial)

Evernote ← Sign up for a free Evernote account here!

CRM (This is a Webinar Ray presented on How to Choose a CRM for Small Business)

OneNote

Google Apps Script

Google Slides

Apple Pages

iCloud

Apple Keynote

OpenDocument format

Google Drive

Microsoft Excel Training

Google Sheets Training

Apple Numbers Training

Ray: We didn’t discuss this, but I’d remisce if we didn’t mention Airtable. Per their website, “Airtable makes it easy to organize stuff, people, ideas and anything else you can imagine with your team.” Worth checking out!

Raw Text Transcript

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are you ready to manage your work and

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personal world better to live a more

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fulfilling productive life then you've

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come to the right place

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welcome to productivity cast the weekly

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show about all things productivity here

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are your hosts Ray Sidney-Smith and

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Augusto Pinaud and welcome back to

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productivity cast everybody the weekly

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show about all things personal

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productivity as do you know I'm Ray

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Sidney-Smith and I'm here with Augusto

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Pinaud how's it gonna Augusto going pretty

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well pretty well fantastic

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well it's our pleasure to introduce our

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newest podcast contributor to the

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productivity cast team Art Gelwicks

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he's a business process project

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management and collaboration consultant

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for professionals small to medium-sized

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businesses and nonprofits our is also

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the founder of The Idea Pump

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consultancy definitely check out the

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blog over there at the idea pump dot com

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and is an experienced public speaker

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welcome to ProductivityCast oh thank you

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I appreciate it it's good to be with you

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guys and talk about the topic du jour

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we're looking forward to having you on

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as a regular contributor so that's

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always a good thing

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and so today we are going to be talking

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about software that I think everybody

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pretty much knows I mean you know we all

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use it in some way shape or form which

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is spreadsheet software and there are so

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many today that we sort of I thought

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would be really fun for us to actually

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discuss the variety of them and their

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pros and cons based on how all of us

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sort of used them just as a sort of

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primer you know we started off with

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really Microsoft Excel I mean it was a

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it was another product that was bought

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by Microsoft way back you know in I

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believe it's the 80s and forgive me if

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I'm someone can correct me if I'm wrong

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but the you know the software has

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developed into what is now Microsoft

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Excel and here we are you know 30 odd

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years later and now we have you know

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products from Apple to open-source

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software like libre office having calc

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to so many other spreadsheet software

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and I want to just sort of talk about

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what we use why we use it

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and the pros and cons of those pieces so

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let's start off with the big elephant in

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the room which is Microsoft Excel what

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we all have experienced with Microsoft

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Excel how Microsoft Excel is one of

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those things that I consider the Swiss

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Army knife of the office suite I've used

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I have used personally and watched Excel

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be used for just about everything

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positive and lots of things that

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probably shouldn't be used for when you

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look at the function set that's included

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in it and its capability of not only

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handling and basic mathematical

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functionalities and financial

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calculations things that are extremely

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common that it's used for Excel is also

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very commonly used as a data modeling

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tool in a database in many cases where

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you would actually think that you would

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probably push into a larger database

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system a lot of those pieces come back

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into Excel I work a lot in the

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collaborative space with systems like

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SharePoint so you start to see Excel

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tying to those data systems to pull

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information down for analysis the

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challenge you get with something like

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Excel is you're right it's the elephant

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in the room and unfortunately often the

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elephant can take out 90% of the room it

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has such a intersect and so many

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capabilities that like most things in

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office only about 20% of them are

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actually used by anyone but you start to

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miss out on some of the capabilities but

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just over a couple of days like today

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I'm going to be spending most of the day

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using Excel building out data models and

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wireframes

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or an application design is it the

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optimal tool for that no but it can do

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it and it can do it notably well and it

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happens to be one that's right there and

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readily available I remember my first

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use of Excel was actually developing

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applications for you know the company

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that I worked for and you know because

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it could do all of these sophisticated

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formulas that we just decided to turn

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the various sheets into the workflow

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that helped us move data from one set of

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cells within

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one tab to the next each department put

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in their information you know in each of

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the various tabs and then we got sort of

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the output on the other side and it was

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it did its job you know what I mean it

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was great and there was a time in which

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I felt that was sort of the ultimate

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until I got more geeky and excited about

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using access Microsoft Access and then

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we used you know the Microsoft Excel

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database as our as our database to pull

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into access and really use the front-end

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access you know graphic user interface

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the GUI for purposes of having forms and

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things of that nature for people to be

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...