Notion vs Spreadsheets: The Major Difference Between Databases & Sheets!

when I was first getting started with notion I compared it to Excel and I figured oh this probably works how Excel Works they both have tables they both have formulas but boy was I wrong notion in Excel are totally different and if you are just getting started with notion you might be stuck in that old Excel Paradigm that you might be used to because it's been around for so long and so many people use it but today I'm just going to explain the difference between notion and Excel more specifically notion databases and Excel spreadsheets if you have questions about notion or if you have questions about this video the best way to get in touch with me is to tweet at me so definitely tweet at productive underscore dude on Twitter if you have any questions and don't forget to follow me for bite-sized notion and productivity related content we'll see you on Twitter in notion our databases are made up of columns which represent the different properties that are available to you and rows where you can create a page that's related to these different properties in notion it's mandatory that each row gets a page and that's this name column here by default it's called name you can change the name of this but what you'll notice is you cannot delete this name column it's mandatory right so this is actually a page that gets added to your notion database you can open it you can see all of the different properties that are related to it like this tags property here you also see it in the table view now the other thing to mention about notion is you can view this in many different ways if I go to layout here it's very simple to switch between a table a kanban board a timeline a calendar a list and a gallery view now while this is possible to view data in a similar way in Excel it's very difficult and it's going to require lots of formulas and lots of referencing to these different items that you're trying to pull from but in notion it's very simple you just change your layout here and you can view your data in different ways now I'm going to be explaining Excel here in Google Sheets and I'm sorry for those of you who are Microsoft fans but I've never been able to jump on board with Microsoft I just prefer this free alternative that has almost all the features that I personally need so this is Google Sheets but it's similar enough to excel that I think I can use this for my explanation today and I'm sorry for those of you who are being blinded right now Google Sheets does not have a built-in dark mode unfortunately at least that I could find now in Excel or Google Sheets we still have columns and we still have rows but the way that they're treated is different you can think of excel as an open canvas or where you can add information in any of these individual cells it's a lot more cell based we aren't stuck with just a simple name column tags column and a formula column for instance if I wanted to create a formula in this cell I could create a formula that has to do with anything within this spreadsheet or even on another sheet if I wanted to add another sheet I can reference any cells with a formula whereas in notion we can only reference the other properties within its specific row that we're referring to so imagine being stuck just confined to this row right here with your formula in Excel it certainly wouldn't be very flexible however notion will be more useful to people who want to simplify and organize things whereas Excel is going to excel no pun intended at things like Finance right where you have lots of numbers pulling from all different places and you need to create a financial tracker Finance is something that I've tried to do in notion and I've even watched some tutorials but it just feels like you're forcing it when you're trying to do finance and notion whereas in Excel or Google Sheets it's so much easier to get exactly what you're looking for and to be able to sum the numbers from different places bring them where you need to see them and so on now calculations are possible in notion you can calculate different things but you can only calculate within the same column that you're focusing on so if I want to calculate something in this column I could hit calculate here and I could do one of these calculations I'm going to delete this date property and I'm going to show you also how formulas work because formulas only work within the row that you're in so this formula only works in this row this formula only works for this row and so on whereas this calculation only works for this column this calculation only works for this column and we have this mandatory page here that's related to all of these different properties that you can add here as columns so let's go ahead and create a number I'm just going to show you actually let's create two number properties here I'm just going to show you how we can do calculations in notion this will help you visualize it a bit so here we're just going to add 4 5 and 7 and here I can calculate and if I wanted to I could sum these numbers I could average them I could do anything that I want but only with this calculation in this column can I do that now if I wanted to affect a row I could put some numbers here but I can only calculate with this formula within this row so I can't go prop and I can select number plus number one which is referring to these different properties here and hit done it's going to add these two numbers together but there's not a way for me to use this formula in this row to calculate all of these numbers for instance whereas in Excel I could have a number property here a number property here and these actually aren't even properties I'm just saying property to relate it back to notion but I could have a 10 and a 10 and we could put our formula all the way over here you know I could equal this Plus this and it would work or I could even go ahead and add a number over on a separate sheet and I could add that as well Plus I go grab my 40 hit enter and that formula is going to be able to handle something more complex and free form like that whereas in notion we're stuck to the columns and the rows that we're referring to at that specific time so this is my best explanation of the differences between notion and Excel there are probably a lot more but I think this video distills down everything that you need to know when you're making your decision about which one you should go with again notion is better for organizing things in general things like tasks notes much much better for things like that whereas Excel is better at handling lots of numbers maybe your financial transactions things like that so I hope this video helped you and I hope that it enlightened you on the Paradigm that you need to have going into notion in the old school Paradigm of excel alright we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Productive Dude

Views: 17,869

Keywords: notion, excel, notion app, microsoft excel, notion vs excel, spreadsheets, excel vs notion, notion formulas, notion calculations, excel formulas, excel calculations, notion and excel, notion or excel, how to use notion, notion tutorial, notion app tutorial, productive dude, excel app, excel spreadsheets, notion spreadsheet

Id: btR7BuzHkIE

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023