Hi Ken. I never got around to testing Office 365 when you had a test site up and running (had some problems signing in, and then gave up. I'm easily frustrated!) But now I have a quick question regarding it that you or other readers might be able to answer.
Do the web-based excel files on office 365 offer you anything much more than a humble (and free) Excel web app? Or are they essentially one and the same? Or am I way off the mark?
Reason I ask is that I have a client who currently has a whole bunch of excel models he distributes to end users that have considerable file size due to very poor construction and unnecessarily repeated information. (The 120MB filesize of one such spreadsheet is entirely due to the fact that just 10MB of raw data is repeated in its entirety many times throughout the spreadsheet, with the help of thousands of VLOOKUP formulas, many intermediate pivot tables – and their associated caches - etc.)
Given this file is really just a database, I also started wondering whether Excel is the way to go. So I’m investigating a few other that might suit this a heck of a lot better as well as better facilitate his end goal of providing secure data to subscribers. One of these options is using MS Access, or a combination of an Access back end, and an Excel front end…possibly with the Access database hosted on a web server, with Excel passing specific user requests to it via an ASP web query…something I’m learning from Daniel Ferry’s Excel Hero Academy.
But another is using a cloud offering such as Office 365. However, if Office 365 doesn’t really offer any more in terms of a web app than Excel Web Apps, then I’ll just go with Excel Web Apps. While they don’t support macros, I’m pretty sure that a cleverly designed interface using pivot tables will be just fine. And I believe they can be locked down so that just specific users have access privileges.
Do the web-based excel files on office 365 offer you anything much more than a humble (and free) Excel web app? Or are they essentially one and the same? Or am I way off the mark?
Reason I ask is that I have a client who currently has a whole bunch of excel models he distributes to end users that have considerable file size due to very poor construction and unnecessarily repeated information. (The 120MB filesize of one such spreadsheet is entirely due to the fact that just 10MB of raw data is repeated in its entirety many times throughout the spreadsheet, with the help of thousands of VLOOKUP formulas, many intermediate pivot tables – and their associated caches - etc.)
Given this file is really just a database, I also started wondering whether Excel is the way to go. So I’m investigating a few other that might suit this a heck of a lot better as well as better facilitate his end goal of providing secure data to subscribers. One of these options is using MS Access, or a combination of an Access back end, and an Excel front end…possibly with the Access database hosted on a web server, with Excel passing specific user requests to it via an ASP web query…something I’m learning from Daniel Ferry’s Excel Hero Academy.
But another is using a cloud offering such as Office 365. However, if Office 365 doesn’t really offer any more in terms of a web app than Excel Web Apps, then I’ll just go with Excel Web Apps. While they don’t support macros, I’m pretty sure that a cleverly designed interface using pivot tables will be just fine. And I believe they can be locked down so that just specific users have access privileges.