Significant differences between Excel online and Excel
There are many differences between both versions. The major ones are listed below:
- Draw tab
- Page Layout
- Timeline
- View menu
- Developer tab
Let’s discuss each of them to compare the two sides of Excel.
Draw tab
If you’re an Excel user, you probably won’t have heard about the Draw tab in Excel. But wait! There exists a draw tab in the Excel web app? Look for yourself.
The Draw tab holds a variety of options for you to choose from. You can draw lines and more amazingly, you don’t have to rely on a mere set of in-built shapes. Simply create one the way you like.
Imagine how fun it will be to draw on an Excel sheet 🤩
Apart from this, when you download Excel files in which any draw feature is used, it will appear the same on the desktop app. But you won’t be able to make many edits to it in the desktop app.
This is one of Excel Online’s features that gives it a plus point compared to its desktop counterpart ✌
Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist
Page layout
The editing options of the page layout tab make one of the most notable differences between Excel Online and Excel desktop.
Excel’s Online version lacks a lot of the features you have access to in the desktop app. Take a quick look at them.
Here’s what the Page Layout tab from the desktop version of Excel looks like.
Microsoft Excel Online offers only the following features under the Page Layout tab.
There is not much you can do to arrange your document pages the way you want them with the web app. So, the desktop version takes the point for this one.
Kasper Langmann, Microsoft Office Specialist
Timeline
If you commonly use the timeline feature in Excel, you will be disappointed when you get your hands on the online version. The complete smart art menu is absent.
Here is what the insert tab from the desktop Excel app looks like.
And here is a much-squeezed version of the insert tab offered by the Web App.
The Excel desktop app clearly wins here 😬
View menu
By far, this has to be the most tremendous difference between the two versions of Excel. The view menu alone makes a big, big difference between Excel web and Excel desktop.
There are a total of five options available in the view tab of the web app. Yes, you heard that right, only five:
- Sheet view
- Freeze panes
- Editing grid lines
- New window
- Zoom in/zoom out
And here comes a whole wide library of options that the View tab from the desktop version offers.
We guess this point goes to the desktop app again 🤷♂️
Developer tab
Let’s get it straight; the online app does not support VBA coding. You cannot even add any macros to your spreadsheet.
So for all the developers out there, the online version is not for you.
Do we even need to tell who gets this point 🙄
