I am frustrated by Google Docs. Google got the collaboration part right, very right. Then they stagnated on making it better. It hasn’t improved much since then.
Google spreadsheet misses some features that are used on a daily basis by anyone using excel such as cutting and pasting columns. Whenever you cut a column in excel and paste it somewhere else on the document, excel will shift the other columns to the right and insert the cut column in the middle. Google spreadsheet replaces it.
I am helping a friend write an application for a scholarship. Since this is a lot of collaboration, we are using Google docs. The scholarship application requires specific word count to every section. In Microsoft word, if you select lines of text, the application will tell you how many words you’ve selected and how many there are in the document overall. I now have to select text, copy it to word, check the word count, edit, copy and paste again in Google Doc.
I won’t talk about manipulating tables in Google Docs and Google Slides. This needs a series of posts.
The problem is not the lack of these features, the problem is it hasn’t improved much since inception. When Microsoft released it’s office online suite, it was no where close to Google’s. I don’t know how far Microsoft’s product went but now there is a switching cost to move to Microsoft. I also have to use Google docs at work for collaboration since we are on the Google stack.