Yes, Google Sheets works like Excel — but only until your finance team pastes a pivot table into cell A1 and wonders why nothing recalculates.
The Problem
You’re sharing a budget tracker with three colleagues across time zones. You build it in Excel (A1:E15), save it to OneDrive, then upload it to Google Drive so others can comment. They open it in Sheets — and suddenly:
- Your
=XLOOKUP(B2,Data!A:A,Data!C:C)returns #N/A - Conditional formatting on C2:C20 vanishes after editing
- That slick data validation dropdown? Gone. Replaced with plain text.
This isn’t user error. It’s version drift — and it’s costing teams hours every week. Below is a real snapshot from a Q3 marketing spend sheet that broke when moved from Excel to Sheets. Notice how row 4, 7, and 9 behave differently than expected:
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| =TEXTJOIN(", ",TRUE,A2:A6) returns #NAME? | TEXTJOIN exists in Sheets, but only if all cells are non-blank — unlike Excel’s looser tolerance | Wrap in IFERROR or use FILTER(A2:A6,A2:A6<>\
|