Spreadsheets Excel for Cross-Team Collaboration, Outpacing SQL on Ease of Use

For example, collaboration in Google Sheets is much easier: - Share a link with your collaborators - Add comments - Track file changes Image by Author If your collaborators are outside the data team (e.g., finance, marketing, operations), chances are they don’t use SQL — with spreadsheets, that doesn’t matter. You Want to Visualize and Present Data SQL is for querying and data analysis, but it’s not great for presenting your findings. Usually, you’d export the output of your queries elsewhere.

Ironically, it’s often spreadsheets we were trying to avoid. If visualizing and presenting data is important and you can perform analysis relatively easily in a spreadsheet, then choose it over SQL. Spreadsheets are both calculation and presentation tools.

Image by Author Typically, you’d choose spreadsheets over SQL if you need: - Charts for a presentation - Pivot tables for executives - A financial forecast model 5. Your Work Is Iterative and Messy Examples of such work are building models, brainstorming scenarios, and testing assumptions. This is where I’d use spreadsheets.

Image by Author You can use them to: - Brainstorm financial scenarios -> copy the sheet, tweak a few cells, and instantly see the results - Testing assumptions -> write two formulas, compare them, delete the weaker one; no schema migration needed - Quick what-if models -> build a rough version in a spreadsheet before formalizing it in SQL - Ad-hoc annotations -> color-coding, leaving comments, highlighting data - Formula iteration -> easily change =SUM(A1:A52) to =AVERAGE(A1:A52); no need to rewrite queries or validate syntax 6. Your Audience Doesn’t Speak SQL Company leaders, project managers, and external clients are far more likely to open a spreadsheet than a database.