Managing a project can feel like herding cats. Everyone has their agenda, time is of the essence, and a lot is riding on getting things right. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a clear visual that kept the whole team on the same page? Luckily, there are plenty of tools to help you get organized, including Smartsheet and Excel. We will also touch upon some amazing Google Sheets hacks.

Both programs are robust spreadsheet solutions. However, they have some key differences that might make one a better fit for your project than the other. This guide will help you sort through the similarities and differences of Smartsheet vs. Excel so you can pick the best tool for your next project. If you’re still not sure how to choose between Smartsheet and Excel, the Spreadsheet AI Tool from Numerous can help. This tool can quickly analyze your project and provide tailored suggestions on the best spreadsheet solution to use, based on your unique needs.

Table of Contents

• What Is Smartsheet?

• What Is Microsoft Excel?

• Smartsheet vs Excel

• Which One Should You Use?

• Make Decisions At Scale Through AI With Numerous AI’s Spreadsheet AI Tool

What Is Smartsheet?

Smartsheet is a cloud-based work management platform that blends the familiar look of spreadsheets with powerful project and task management tools. It’s designed for teams and organizations that want to plan, track, automate, and report on work all within one central workspace. While Smartsheet may look like Excel at a glance, it is not just a spreadsheet. It's a collaborative system of record for real-time work execution, which helps users manage everything from marketing campaigns and product launches to onboarding processes, budget approvals, and construction timelines.

Core Functionality of Smartsheet 

Spreadsheet-Style Interface The grid format is familiar to spreadsheet users, but it's enhanced with features for assigning tasks, tracking statuses, and linking data across sheets. 

Multiple Project Views 

• Grid View: Like a classic spreadsheet, but interactive 

• Gantt View: Ideal for timelines and task dependencies 

• Card View: A Kanban-style board for drag-and-drop task management 

• Calendar View: Helps visualize due dates and scheduled events 

Automation & Workflows 

You can build no-code automations to trigger alerts, move tasks, or send emails based on rules you define (e.g., “When status is marked complete, notify manager”). 

Dashboards & Reports 

Smartsheet offers customizable dashboards that pull data from multiple sheets, making them ideal for executives, clients, or project stakeholders who require a high-level overview. 

Collaboration & Permissions 

Team members can comment, @mention others, attach files, and track versions all in real time. Admins can define who can view, edit, or manage specific items. 

Smartsheet's Template 

The library includes pre-built templates for project management, IT tracking, marketing calendars, HR onboarding, finance budgets, and more, making it easy to set up and use. 

What Makes Smartsheet Unique? 

Smartsheet isn’t just another project tool; it excels because it allows structured collaboration. Most teams have workflows that involve both structured data (like a spreadsheet) and task management (like a Kanban board or calendar). Smartsheet brings both together. It's spreadsheet-based but project-first. Built-in Gantt charts and dependency tracking. Enterprise-grade security and compliance (used by over 90% of the Fortune 100). Integrates with key platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Jira, and Google Workspace. Supports resource management and budgeting tools for PMOs and enterprise teams 

Who Typically Uses Smartsheet? 

Smartsheet is widely used across various industries and departments. Common users include Project managers managing cross-departmental initiatives, Marketing teams planning content calendars and campaign launches, IT departments handling service tickets, asset tracking, and change management, HR teams onboarding employees or managing training programs, Finance teams tracking budgets, approvals, and vendor procurement, Construction companies scheduling field work, permits, and inspections. 

Real-World Example 

A mid-sized software company uses Smartsheet to plan and execute product releases. The product team uses Gantt View to map out sprint timelines. The marketing team uses Calendar View to track email campaigns and launch deliverables. The exec team gets a real-time dashboard showing progress across all departments. Everyone works in different sheets, but they’re connected, synchronized, and transparent, all thanks to Smartsheet’s architecture. 

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What Is Microsoft Excel?

Excel’s Power vs Smartsheet’s Collaboration  

If you want to analyze a large dataset, Excel is the tool to use. With its advanced formulas, quick calculations, and ability to perform complex data modeling, Excel can easily handle thousands of rows of data and find answers to your questions quickly. Smartsheet can also manage large datasets, but its capabilities aren’t as robust as Excel’s. You can use the tool to create reports and dashboards, but these features are designed for visualization and collaborative project execution, rather than analytical complexity. If you want to perform a data analysis and share the results with your team, start with Excel to find the answers. Then, use Smartsheet to present your findings to the team and track their progress on any resulting action items.  

Automated Workflows: Excel vs Smartsheet  

Excel can automate complex tasks like running calculations, transforming data, and generating reports using macros and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). So, for repetitive tasks and processes that require intricate calculations, Excel can save users loads of time. Smartsheet also has automation features, but they’re more focused on collaborative project management. With Smartsheet, you can automate repetitive tasks like alerting team members when a task is assigned to them or sending reminder notifications when a due date is approaching. In summary, if you want to automate workflows for complex analytical tasks, go with Excel. If you want to automate collaborative project management processes, choose Smartsheet.  

Data Visualization in Excel vs Smartsheet  

Both Excel and Smartsheet offer solid data visualization capabilities, but they serve different purposes. Excel’s robust charting tools are built for analytical purposes. You can create a variety of visualizations to analyze better and understand your data. Once you’ve identified patterns and trends, you can present your findings with Excel’s attractive, customizable charts. Smartsheet’s visualizations are designed for reporting and collaborative project management. You can create reports, dashboards, and charts to help your team track project progress and understand performance metrics. While both tools offer data visualization capabilities, Excel is the go-to tool for analytics, and Smartsheet is built for project management.  

Use Cases for Excel vs Smartsheet  

As you can see, there are significant differences between Excel and Smartsheet. Excel is excellent for performing complex data analyses, while Smartsheet is built for collaboration and project management. To help you understand which tool is best for your needs, let’s look at a few real-world use cases for each application.  

When to Use Excel  

Excel is a great option when you need to quickly analyze a large dataset, run complex calculations, and automate repetitive processes. For example, an investment analyst might use Excel to manage a client’s portfolio. Daily stock data could be imported via an API, and Excel would calculate risk-adjusted returns using custom formulas and macros. The client dashboard would auto-update using charts and pivot tables, and forecast scenarios would be built with Excel’s Data Tables and Scenario Manager. All of this is possible without needing additional platforms like Smartsheet.

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Smartsheet vs Excel

1. Interface and Usability: What's Your Style? 

Smartsheet offers a user interface that combines the familiarity of spreadsheets with task-driven project views. Users can toggle between grid view (which looks like a spreadsheet), Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and calendars. This flexibility makes it great for people managing workflows, timelines, and multi-stakeholder processes. Excel, on the other hand, is focused on its grid and formula system. Everything revolves around cells, rows, columns, and worksheets. While it lacks alternate visual project views, its interface is more robust for handling data entry, formula building, and number-heavy tasks. It's more of a blank canvas than a guided workspace. 

2. Collaboration and Real-Time Access: Control Freak or People Person? 

Smartsheet is built for team collaboration in the cloud. It allows multiple users to work simultaneously, assign tasks, comment in rows, set deadlines, and create workflows, all with detailed access controls. You can give someone view-only access to one sheet, editing rights to another, or automate notifications when changes are made. Excel has introduced co-authoring via Microsoft 365, which enables real-time collaboration in cloud-hosted files. However, collaboration in Excel is less structured. There are no built-in task assignments or activity feeds unless you manually create systems for them. For traditional desktop users, Excel is still a single-user experience. 

3. Automation and Workflow Logic: Do You Prefer No-Code or Complex Code? 

Smartsheet shines with no-code automation. You can create rules like: “If task status changes to complete, send a notification to the project owner,” or “When a new row is added, request approval from the manager.” These automations are accessible to non-technical users and easy to set up with dropdown menus. Excel supports powerful automation, but it’s rooted in scripting. You need to use VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) or Power Automate to build workflows. This allows you to perform incredibly complex tasks, such as connecting to APIs, generating reports, or transforming datasets, but it also requires technical skills or developer assistance. 

4. Data Analysis and Modeling: What Will You Do With All That Data? 

This is where Excel dominates. Its formula engine is unmatched, supporting advanced calculations, conditional logic, and statistical analysis. With tools like Power Query and Power Pivot, Excel can handle millions of rows of data, merge datasets, and build interactive dashboards and pivot tables. Smartsheet, while capable of simple formulas and filtering, is not built for deep data analysis. It has limited computational capabilities, no pivot tables, and a lower row limit per sheet. If your primary need is to model revenue projections, perform regression analysis, or manipulate large datasets, Excel is far superior.

5. Visual Reporting and Dashboards: What's Your Reporting Style? 

Smartsheet provides customizable dashboards that pull live data from sheets and display them in widgets, charts, and summary blocks. You can build executive views that update automatically as team members work in their sheets. It’s ideal for managers who want a clean visual of progress, KPIs, or status without digging into rows. Excel allows for highly customizable charts and visuals, but dashboarding is a manual process. You need to build the layout yourself and maintain formulas. For more dynamic, visual dashboards, Excel users often push data into Power BI, which requires an extra platform and some setup effort. 

6. Templates and Getting Started: Who Wants to Start From Scratch? 

Smartsheet has a vast library of pre-built templates for marketing campaigns, product roadmaps, IT ticketing, HR onboarding, finance trackers, and more. These are plug-and-play, meaning you can start a project immediately without setting up structures from scratch. Excel has templates too, but they tend to be more general (e.g., personal budget, invoice, timesheet). Most complex Excel setups, such as modeling or workflow design, are custom-built or sourced from third-party marketplaces. 

7. Integration with Other Tools: How Will You Fit into Your Team's Existing Processes? 

Smartsheet integrates seamlessly with tools like Salesforce, Jira, Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and dozens of others. These integrations make it easy to embed Smartsheet into your team’s larger tech ecosystem, keeping updates and status changes centralized. Excel integrates tightly within the Microsoft ecosystem. It pairs naturally with Outlook, Power BI, SharePoint, and Teams. You can also use Power Automate to connect Excel to non-Microsoft tools, though this often takes more setup than Smartsheet’s plug-and-play integrations. 

8. Scalability and Performance: How Big Will Your Project Get? 

For structured team workflows, Smartsheet scales well, particularly across departments or enterprises that utilize dashboards, templates, and automations. However, it struggles with massive datasets (e.g., anything above 50,000 rows), and performance can drop if too many automations or linked sheets are active. Excel, on the other hand, can scale to handle highly complex and large workbooks, especially when combined with Power Pivot. It’s preferred for enterprise-grade modeling, auditing, and financial projections. However, it can become unwieldy or disorganized when used to manage workflows or projects without a clear structure. 

9. Offline Access and Reliability: What Happens If the Internet Goes Down? 

Excel is the clear winner in offline capability. You can work entirely without internet access and save locally. This is crucial for professionals in finance, research, or fieldwork who can’t rely on a constant connection. Smartsheet is primarily a cloud-based platform. Offline access is limited. While you can export sheets or reports for viewing, editing, and collaboration, these features are only fully functional online. Numerous is an AI-powered tool that enables content marketers, E-Commerce businesses, and more to automate tasks many times over through AI, such as writing SEO blog posts, generating hashtags, mass categorizing products with sentiment analysis and classification, and more, simply by dragging down a cell in a spreadsheet.

With a simple prompt, Numerous returns any spreadsheet function, complex or straightforward, within seconds. The capabilities of Numerous are endless. It is versatile and can be used with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Get started today with Numerous.ai so that you can make business decisions at scale using AI, in both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Learn more about how you can 10x your marketing efforts with Numerous’s ChatGPT for Spreadsheets tool.

 Which One Should You Use? 

Choosing Between Smartsheet and Excel: What You Should Know

Choosing between Smartsheet and Microsoft Excel comes down to your workflow priorities, team needs, and data complexity. But it's not always about picking one over the other. Many professionals and teams use both, and increasingly, they're also turning to AI tools like Numerous to automate tasks and speed up insights across both platforms. Let’s break it down. 

When to Use Smartsheet

Use Smartsheet if your primary goal is managing collaborative project timelines, team tasks, status updates, approvals, and tracking. If you work in operations, marketing, HR, or IT, where process structure and visibility matter more than complex calculations, choose Smartsheet. Also consider this tool if you want to automate tasks without code (e.g., alert a manager when a due date is missed, or move a row when a checkbox is selected).

Smartsheet dashboards are also handy if you need a dashboard for leadership or cross-team visibility on progress. Finally, if you work in a cross-functional team where spreadsheet skills vary, Smartsheet’s simplicity and templates reduce friction. Smartsheet shines when the process is the product, for example, managing a product roadmap, onboarding flow, content calendar, or vendor pipeline. It gives structure and visibility without needing advanced technical skills. 

When to Use Excel

Use Excel if your work involves deep data analysis, modeling, or statistical forecasting. If you rely on pivot tables, complex nested formulas, or VBA macros, choose Excel for its powerful capabilities. This tool is also ideal if you want complete control over your logic, structure, and calculations. Excel shines when working with large or sensitive datasets and requires offline functionality. Finally, if you're in finance, engineering, data science, accounting, or another number-heavy field, Excel is unbeatable for managing the data. It’s not built for team task collaboration, but when precision matters, it’s the gold standard. 

Where Numerous Comes In

Here’s Where the Game Changes

You can pair both Smartsheet and Excel with an AI tool like Numerous to save hours on routine tasks and scale your productivity, without compromising accuracy or visibility, whether you’re working in a Smartsheet grid or an Excel workbook.

Numerous Helps You With

Generate summaries, formulas, or reports instantly. Need to explain a complex Excel sheet in plain language? Numerous can do it in seconds. Want to auto-generate a Smartsheet report from live data? Numerous tools can help structure it and automate repetitive documentation. Use Numerous to fill out project status updates, generate descriptions, or write action items based on tasks completed in Smartsheet. In Excel, you can create formatted tables or explain the results of a pivot analysis in plain English. Create clever prompts that reduce manual work. For example, “Summarize all overdue tasks in this Smartsheet,” or “Generate a quarterly sales overview from this Excel file.” Numerous is prompt-ready and can execute logic across your data with less clicking and more thinking. 

Bridge Communication Between Tools

Got data in Excel and tasks in Smartsheet? Numerous can help draft project summaries, condense insights into reports, or prepare stakeholder updates across both tools using the same language and tone. Help beginners look like pros. Don’t know Excel formulas? Numerous people can write them for you. Don’t know how to structure a task report in Smartsheet? Numerous templates can be created and filled with brilliant AI writing. 

So Which One Should You Choose? 

If you need collaboration, task visibility, and simple automation, go with Smartsheet and integrate Numerous to save even more time writing updates, managing progress, and summarizing tasks. If your workflow is analysis-first and logic-heavy, Excel remains the king, but adding Numerous can offload report writing, formula generation, and dashboard creation. And if you're using both tools, then Numerous becomes the glue that connects clarity, automation, and efficiency across your entire workflow. 

Let’s Talk About Numerous AI

Numerous is an AI-powered tool that enables content marketers, E-Commerce businesses, and more to automate tasks many times over through AI, such as writing SEO blog posts, generating hashtags, mass categorizing products with sentiment analysis and classification, and more, simply by dragging down a cell in a spreadsheet. With a simple prompt, Numerous returns any spreadsheet function, complex or straightforward, within seconds. The capabilities of Numerous are endless. It is versatile and can be used with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Get started today with Numerous.ai so that you can make business decisions at scale using AI, in both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Learn more about how you can 10x your marketing efforts with Numerous’s ChatGPT for Spreadsheets tool.

Make Decisions At Scale Through AI With Numerous AI’s Spreadsheet AI Tool

Numerous is an AI tool that helps you complete tasks in Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel more quickly and efficiently. Multiple specialists are utilizing AI to automate and expedite the completion of spreadsheet functions and tasks. When you get stuck on a problem in a spreadsheet, simply type your question into Numerous, and the tool will return the answer in seconds.

For example, say you want to write a formula to calculate the average of a set of numbers in Google Sheets. Rather than manually constructing the formula yourself or searching for help in online forums, you could prompt Numerous with a question like, Average the scores of students in the spreadsheet. In seconds, the AI will return the correct formula to help you complete your task. Numerous AI even work inside your spreadsheet to help you solve your problems without disrupting your workflow.

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