I’m working with a Google Sheets document that contains over 5000 rows and 74 columns. The spreadsheet has multiple worksheets that reference each other, plus tons of complex formulas throughout. Our team of several people needs to access this file daily to make edits and updates. The problem is that the performance is terrible. Loading takes forever and everything runs super slow. A colleague mentioned Airtable as an alternative, but I have zero experience with that platform. I’ve spent several days trying to research different options but I’m still confused about what would work best for our needs. Can anyone give me some guidance on better solutions for managing this much data with multiple users?
Google Sheets starts choking around 3000-4000 rows when you’ve got heavy formulas and multiple people working on it. The constant recalculation every time someone makes a change kills performance. I switched to Excel Online for a similar project and it was way more responsive. Co-authoring works great and it handles bigger datasets much better. Just heads up - if you’re using Google Sheets-specific functions, you’ll run into conversion issues. Another trick that worked for us: split your sheet into smaller workbooks and link them together. Cut our loading times by 60% and kept all the same functionality. Made our daily workflow actually bearable again.
google sheets really struggles w/ big data, fr. maybe consider excel online or even airtable? they both manage larger files way better, especially when ur team needs to edit together. you’ll probably find better performance there.
You’ve definitely encountered the limitations of Google Sheets. With over 5000 rows and numerous complex formulas, it’s not designed to handle such workloads effectively. The issue you’re facing mainly stems from real-time collaboration where constant recalculations slow everything down. I faced a similar challenge and eventually moved my project to a dedicated database solution. While Airtable is a step up, for the volume of data you’re managing, consider a more robust system like SQL with a user-friendly front end. The improvement in performance was remarkable after we transitioned away from spreadsheets.