I was very excited when I first found out about Grist, because I’ve been wanting a “better Excel” for a long time. I thought maybe we could finally upgrade from Excel to something truly modern.
My hopes were dashed when I realized that Grist lacks the basic functionality of “save”, “save as” and “double click a file to open it”. In that instant, Grist went from “promising new thing” to “completely unusable”.
Here are my reasons for why the ability to save/open files is an absolute necessity:
It’s familiar. Users know how to save a file, how to open a file, how to make a copy of a file, etc.
It allows us to organize our data. Our company works on a lot of different projects, and in order to stay organized, we make a folder for each project. Those folders can store everything related to the project - powerpoint presentations, word documents, python scripts, pdfs, images, etc. - except grist documents.
I really, really wish my company could adopt Grist. But as it is now, that’s just not possible. There is simply no way I can convince my colleagues to use a software that is so unfamiliar and incompatible with our existing workflows.
Why you want to “save as”? That doesn´t make sense in a database like system.
If you want a simple spreadsheet system, just more modern, go with Google Sheets I guess.
What do you have in mind when you want something unlike Excel but that works like Excel?
Maybe you guys should revise your paradigms.
ps: I am not related to Grist in any form, just a user who is very happy replacing Excel spreadsheets in my company with Grist, so I don´t have to be as diplomatic as Paul when it comes to someone saying Grist not having “save as”, COMPLETELY RUINS the product.
I’ve already given two reasons why I want to “save as”.
What do you have in mind when you want something unlike Excel but that works like Excel?
Grist, but with the ability to save and open files.
Maybe you guys should revise your paradigms.
Easier said than done.
If you like Grist the way it is, good for you. But for me and my company, the inability to save and load files does in fact COMPLETELY RUIN the product.
These were the reasons. They don´t make much sense to me. Give more specific reasons for each user to save and open files.
Why would a user need to save and open a file?
Grist will be in the network. Users will access apps. Is Excel the ONLY system you work with in the company? Consider your ERP. Do users need to open and close files from their ERP?
Grist, but with the ability to save and open files.
Our company works on a lot of different projects, and in order to stay organized, we make a folder for each project. Those folders can store everything related to the project - powerpoint presentations, word documents, python scripts, pdfs, images, etc. - except grist documents.
Grist works with databases. If you want to keep working with simple spreadsheets, which can´t relate to each other, then Excel or Google Sheets, with all their limitations are the way to go. What Grist does is exactly make DATABASES as easy to use as Excel.
But that means you don´t work with opening and closing databases as if they were files.
Grist, unlike traditional spreadsheet software like Excel, is built on a relational database system. Here’s how you can think about organizing your data in Grist compared to a file-based system:
Centralized Data Management:
File-Based System: You save each project as a separate file. This means you have to open, save, and manage each file individually.
Grist Database System: All your data is stored in a central database. This means you can access and manage all your projects from one place without having to open and close individual files. It allows for a more integrated and streamlined workflow.
Familiar Structure with Enhanced Capabilities:
File-Based System: You’re familiar with creating folders and saving files within those folders.
Grist Database System: Instead of separate files, you have tables that represent different aspects of your projects. For example, a “Projects” table to store project details and child tables like “Tasks,” “Documents,” and “Expenses” to store related information.
Organizing Projects:
Projects Table (Parent Table): This table will store information about each project. Each record represents a unique project.
Fields: Project ID, Project Name, Start Date, End Date, Project Manager, Status, etc.
Tasks Table (Child Table): This table will store tasks related to each project. Each record represents a task within a project.
Fields: Task ID, Project ID (linking to the Projects table), Task Name, Assigned To, Due Date, Status, etc.
Documents Table (Child Table): This table will store documents related to each project. Each record represents a document linked to a project.
Fields: Document ID, Project ID (linking to the Projects table), Document Name, File Link, Upload Date, etc.
Expenses Table (Child Table): This table will track expenses for each project. Each record represents an expense entry for a project.
Fields: Expense ID, Project ID (linking to the Projects table), Description, Amount, Date, etc.
Creating Relationships:
Use the Project ID as a foreign key in the child tables (Tasks, Documents, Expenses) to link each entry to a specific project. This relational structure allows you to organize and retrieve data efficiently.
Viewing Data:
Create views in Grist that join these tables, allowing you to see all tasks, documents, and expenses related to a specific project in one place. For example, a project dashboard can display project details from the Projects table and include related tasks, documents, and expenses from the child tables.
Data Management:
Add a new project: Simply add a new record to the Projects table.
Add tasks, documents, or expenses: Add records to the respective child tables and link them to the correct project using the Project ID.
Benefits:
Centralized Management: All project-related data is organized and accessible from one place.
Scalability: Easily manage and track multiple projects without cluttering the workspace.
Efficiency: Quickly retrieve related data for any project, enhancing decision-making and project tracking.
Create a really good demo on the free cloud version, which has a limit of 5000 rows per document, and I am sure your colleagues would love it.
The software is not unfamiliar. It’s the SAME structure of a relational database as hundreds of others. The difference is that Grist is ultra easy to create new tables, formulas, relations between tables, insert data, etc, compared to other relational databases.
In that sense, Grist is much like Excel.
Because Excel is hardly the only system your company uses, I bet they DO work with similar workflows in other tasks in the company.
Grist, but with the ability to save and open files.
Yeah, I have a hard time imagining a relational database system that works like that. Or how Grist could work like that.
What’s the advantage of saving and opening files, compared to have all your projects structured in a database, and select a project and see all info of it, all files from it, etc?
