Google Sheets vs Excel: what is the same, what is different, and how to switch

Maybe you learned Excel at school and your new job runs on Google Workspace. Maybe you have used Google Sheets for years and the job ad says "advanced Excel". Or your team uses both, and files move between them every week. Either way, the question is the same: how much of what I know carries over, and what do I need to learn?

The short answer is that most of it carries over. The grid, the references and the everyday functions work the same way in both programs, often down to the argument order. The differences are real but limited, and they fall into a few groups: functions that only one program has, how they handle formulas over whole ranges, how files are shared and saved, and how much data each can take. This guide goes through what is the same, what is different, and what to learn first when you switch in either direction.

What is the same

If you can work in one, you can work in the other from the first minute. These work the same way in both:

• The grid. Cells, rows, columns and sheets, addressed the same way: A1, B2:B20, Sheet2!C5.
• Formulas. Every formula starts with an equals sign, and the operators, the order of operations and the dollar sign for absolute references are identical. =B2*(1+$E$1) means the same in both.
• The everyday functions. SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MIN, MAX, ROUND, IF, AND, OR, IFS, SUMIF, COUNTIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX, MATCH, IFERROR, the text functions and the date functions take the same arguments and give the same answers.
• Most keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+Arrow, Ctrl+Shift+Arrow, Ctrl+D, Ctrl+Enter, F2 and F4 behave as they do in Excel. Our shortcuts guide covers them.
• The main features. Sorting, filters, pivot tables, charts, conditional formatting, data validation drop-downs and named ranges are all in both programs, with different menus but the same ideas.

Here is a conditional sum that works unchanged in both:

And a lookup, with the same four arguments in Google Sheets as in Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365:

That is why the exercises on our Google Sheets pages for topics such as SUMIF and XLOOKUP are the same as on the Excel pages. Practice them once and you can use them in both programs, and your progress counts on both.

Function names and separators

One difference catches people out straight away. Both programs show function names in the language they are set to, and both use semicolons between arguments in a language that writes decimals with a comma.

In Excel, both follow your computer's language and regional settings: Danish Excel writes =SUMIF(A2:A6,"East",B2:B6) as SUM.HVIS with semicolons. In Google Sheets, the names follow the language of your Google account, unless you tick Always use English function names under File > Settings. The separators follow the spreadsheet's own locale, which is set per file in the same dialog, so two Sheets files on the same computer can use different separators.

The practical rule for both: if a formula from the web gives an error as soon as you press Enter, check the separators and the function names before you check anything else.

Formulas over whole ranges: ARRAYFORMULA and spilling

The biggest difference in everyday formulas is how each program handles a formula that works on a whole range at once.

In Excel for Microsoft 365, a formula that returns several values spills them into the cells below and to the right. =B2:B20*C2:C20 in D2 fills D2 to D20 with one formula. Functions such as UNIQUE, FILTER and SORT spill the same way.

In Google Sheets, functions that return ranges also spill, but a plain calculation over ranges needs to be wrapped in ARRAYFORMULA:

=ARRAYFORMULA(B2:B20*C2:C20)

ARRAYFORMULA is one of the most used functions in Sheets, because one formula at the top fills the whole column and keeps working when new rows are added. A common pattern adds an IF so empty rows stay empty: =ARRAYFORMULA(IF(B2:B20="","",B2:B20*C2:C20)). Practice it in one formula for a whole column and IF for every row.

Functions that return a range spill in both programs:

When a spilled result has no room, because a cell in the way already has data, Excel shows #SPILL! and Google Sheets shows #REF!. The fix is the same: clear the cells in the way.

If you want a formula that works identically in both programs and in older versions of Excel, SUMPRODUCT does the row-by-row work without any spilling at all:

QUERY: the function only Sheets has

QUERY is the main reason people who know Google Sheets well miss it in Excel. It asks a range a question in a language very close to SQL, the language databases use, and returns a table:

=QUERY(A1:C200,"select A, sum(C) where B = 'Online' group by A",1)

That one formula filters the rows where column B is Online, groups them by column A and sums column C for each group, with a header row. In Excel, the same result takes a pivot table, or a combination of UNIQUE and SUMIFS, or Power Query.

A query is built from a few clauses, always in this order: select picks the columns, where keeps the rows that match, group by makes one row per group, order by sorts and limit keeps the first few rows. You don't need to know SQL to start. Our QUERY topic goes clause by clause:

• select to pick columns,
• where with numbers and with text to keep rows,
• group by with sum for totals per group,
• order by and limit for top lists.

Two things trip up beginners. Text in a query goes in single quotes, because the query itself is already inside double quotes. And the columns are named by their letters, A, B and C, not by their headers.

Other functions only Sheets has

• SPLIT divides a text at a separator into several cells: =SPLIT(A2," ") turns a full name into first and last name. JOIN does the reverse: =JOIN(", ",A2:A5). Excel for Microsoft 365 has TEXTSPLIT and TEXTJOIN for the same jobs. Practice them in splitting a name and joining a list.
• REGEXMATCH, REGEXEXTRACT and REGEXREPLACE find patterns in text with regular expressions. =REGEXEXTRACT(A2,"\d+") pulls the first number out of a text, and =REGEXREPLACE(A2,"[^0-9]","") keeps only the digits of a phone number. Excel for Microsoft 365 has recently added its own REGEXTEST, REGEXEXTRACT and REGEXREPLACE, but older versions of Excel don't have them. The REGEX topic starts with REGEXMATCH.
• COUNTUNIQUE counts distinct values in one step: =COUNTUNIQUE(A2:A100).
• IMPORTRANGE pulls a range from another spreadsheet and keeps it updated: =IMPORTRANGE("spreadsheet URL","Sheet1!A1:C100"). The first time, you click Allow access.
• GOOGLEFINANCE returns stock prices and exchange rates, and GOOGLETRANSLATE translates text from one language to another.

TEXTJOIN, which Excel and Sheets share, is often the simplest choice when a file must work in both:

Small differences in how formulas behave

Shared functions give the same answers in nearly every case, but a few behaviors differ in ways you will notice:

• Errors from FILTER. When nothing matches, FILTER returns #CALC! in Excel and #N/A in Google Sheets. If you wrap it in IFERROR, both give your fallback value. In Excel you can also use FILTER's third argument for the empty case.
• Empty cells in a spilled result. When a spilled range includes an empty source cell, Excel shows 0 and Google Sheets leaves the cell empty.
• Help while you type. Sheets opens a box under the formula with the arguments, a short description and an example, and it suggests whole formulas based on your data. Excel shows the arguments in a smaller tooltip and has Shift+F3 for the full dialog.
• Explaining errors. Hover over an error in Sheets and a note tells you what went wrong, such as which function was not recognized or which value was not found. In Excel, the small warning icon next to the cell does a similar job.
• Your own functions. Both programs support LAMBDA for writing reusable formulas. Excel stores them as names in the Name Manager; Sheets calls them named functions and has its own menu for them under Data.
• Dates. Both store dates as day numbers, and for any date since March 1900 the numbers are the same. Our guide to dates explains how that works.

None of these changes the answer to a normal SUMIF or VLOOKUP. They matter when you copy more advanced formulas from one program to the other, or follow a tutorial written for the other one.

What Excel has that Sheets does not

Going the other way, some things you rely on in Excel are missing or weaker in Google Sheets:

• Size. An Excel worksheet has 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. A Google Sheets file can hold 10 million cells in total, across all its sheets, and it slows down well before that. For large exports, Excel is the safer tool.
• Power Query imports, cleans and reshapes data from files, databases and the web, and repeats the steps on the next import. Sheets has nothing quite like it.
• Power Pivot and the Data Model combine several large tables with relationships and DAX measures.
• VBA macros. Sheets has Apps Script instead, which uses JavaScript. Macros don't convert from one to the other.
• A full desktop app that works offline with every feature. Sheets has an offline mode in Chrome, but it is limited.
• Deeper pivot tables and charts, with more layout, grouping and formatting options, plus What-If tools such as Scenario Manager and data tables.

For most office work none of these come up. For finance, analytics and anything with hundreds of thousands of rows, they often do.

Pivot tables in each

Both programs have pivot tables, and the idea is the same: rows, columns, values and filters, built by dragging fields. Two differences stand out in practice. A Google Sheets pivot table updates by itself when the source data changes, while an Excel pivot table keeps showing the old numbers until you click Refresh, which is a classic source of wrong reports. On the other hand, Excel's pivot tables have more options: grouping dates by month and quarter in one click, several layouts, slicers and timelines, calculated fields and a link to the Data Model. Our pivot table guide explains the Excel version step by step, and most of it applies to Sheets too.

Sharing, saving and versions

The difference you notice first in daily use is not a function at all. Google Sheets lives in the browser and saves every change as you make it. There is no Save button, several people can edit the same sheet at the same time, and you see their cursors move. File > Version history shows every earlier version and lets you restore one.

Excel has caught up a lot: a workbook saved in OneDrive or SharePoint saves automatically, can be edited by several people at once, and has version history too. But many teams still email .xlsx files back and forth, which leads to "Budget_final_v3_NEW.xlsx". If your team switches to Sheets, the biggest change is often that there is one copy of every file.

Comments, sharing permissions (view, comment, edit) and protected ranges exist in both. In Sheets they are the default way of working.

Habits to learn when you switch to Sheets

A few things surprise almost everyone who moves from Excel to Google Sheets in the first week:

• There is no Save. Every change is saved as you make it. That also means a mistake is saved at once, so learn where File > Version history is before you need it.
• Paste values has its own shortcut. Ctrl+Shift+V (Cmd+Shift+V on a Mac) pastes only the values, which is what you want most of the time when you copy from another sheet or a web page.
• Filters are shared. When you filter a shared sheet, everyone else sees the filtered rows too. Use a filter view instead, under Data, which only you see.
• Clean-up tools are in the menu. Data > Data cleanup has Remove duplicates and Trim whitespace, which do the work of TRIM and Remove Duplicates without a helper column. Data > Split text to columns does what Text to Columns does in Excel.
• The locale lives in the file. If dates or separators look wrong in a file someone shared with you, check File > Settings before you change any formulas.
• Comments can assign work. Mention a colleague with @ in a comment and you can assign it to them, so the comment shows up as a task in their email.

Going the other way, people who move from Sheets to Excel mostly need to get used to saving, to the ribbon, and to refreshing pivot tables by hand.

Moving files between them

Google Sheets opens .xlsx files and can download a sheet as .xlsx, so moving a file is easy. What survives the trip:

• Survives: values, formulas with shared functions, number formats, most formatting, conditional formatting, data validation, simple charts and pivot tables.
• Breaks or disappears: VBA macros and Apps Script, Power Query and the Data Model, functions only one program has (QUERY and IMPORTRANGE become errors in Excel), some chart types and some advanced pivot table settings.

If a file has to work in both, stick to the functions they share, avoid relying on spilling for calculations that SUMPRODUCT or a filled-down formula can do, and test the file in the other program before you send it.

When a team uses both

Many teams end up with both programs: finance works in Excel, sales and marketing in Google Sheets, and numbers move between them every week. A few rules keep that from turning into a mess. Decide which program owns each file, and only edit it there; the other side gets a copy or a read-only link. Move data as plain tables of values, one header row and one record per row, rather than as finished reports full of formulas. And when the same figure appears in both, such as monthly revenue, build it the same way in both, with the same SUMIFS conditions, so a difference between the two numbers always means a difference in the data, never in the formula.

Which one to learn, and which for tests

Learn the one you will use. If you don't know yet, learn Excel first. Most employer Excel tests are built around Excel, job ads ask for Excel far more often than for Sheets, and nearly everything carries over. Our guide to learning Excel has a practice plan.

If you already know Excel and are moving to Sheets, you can be productive on day one and get the rest in a few hours:

1. ARRAYFORMULA, because it changes how you build columns of formulas.
2. QUERY, because it replaces many pivot tables and SUMIFS grids.
3. SPLIT, JOIN and the REGEX functions, for cleaning text.
4. Sharing and version history, so you trust the file without a Save button.

If you know Sheets and are moving to Excel, the list is the reverse: learn how spilling works, pivot tables in more depth, and Power Query if your work involves regular imports.

Tests for roles at startups, marketing teams and schools sometimes use Google Sheets, and some let you choose. The skills they check are the same: conditional sums, lookups, IF, text clean-up and summary tables. The data analyst test covers those, and on our Google Sheets pages you can practice the same skills in a grid that behaves like Sheets.

Summary

Google Sheets and Excel share the grid, the formula syntax and nearly all everyday functions, so skills move between them with little effort. Function names and separators follow your language in both, but Sheets sets the separators per file. Excel for Microsoft 365 spills results on its own, while Sheets needs ARRAYFORMULA for plain range calculations. Sheets adds QUERY, SPLIT, JOIN, the REGEX functions and IMPORTRANGE; Excel adds size, Power Query, Power Pivot, VBA and deeper pivot tables. Sheets shares and saves by default, and Excel does when the file lives in OneDrive or SharePoint.

The exercises below cover the functions only Google Sheets has, from your first QUERY to the REGEX functions, in a grid that works like Sheets.