Google Sheets is a fantastic application for creating and sharing spreadsheets, anywhere, anytime and on any device. However, it has certain limitations that may be good to keep in mind, especially if you're switching from another spreadsheet application.
- There is a hard limit of 2 million cells in any one Sheet. However, some factors can push this number lower.
- More than the number of formulas, limits will be reached by the interaction between them. Cells with formulas that are dependent of other cells/sheets/spreadsheets with other formulas that are also dependent, cause constant re-calculations and can increase the loading time and cause latency.
- In this case, a good trick is to getting the data from complex formulas, paste them as "value only" and refer the dependent formula to the "value only" cell instead of the complex formula.
- It's also important to minimize the cells that depend on a large amount of other cells, and cells that are changed frequently as cells will continue to calculate in the background until they update with correct values. Every time a cell is updated, all cells dependent on that cell will also recalculate.
- Breaking up a large spreadsheet into multiple smaller spreadsheets and minimize the number of complex formulas are good ideas to reduce the spreadsheet complexity and prevent issues.
- More than the number of formulas, limits will be reached by the interaction between them. Cells with formulas that are dependent of other cells/sheets/spreadsheets with other formulas that are also dependent, cause constant re-calculations and can increase the loading time and cause latency.
- Revision history.
- Revision history stores a certain number of actions back, and that number varies depending on the complexity of the commands and the amount of data involved in each command. The number is reasonably large and is on average roughly over 1000.
- Revision history doesn't abide by certain time intervals (i.e., Google doesn't store X days' worth of revisions). The availability of revision history is not guaranteed, and spreadsheets with frequent changes, particularly those with dynamic formulas such as ImportHTML and GoogleFinance, tend to make the revision history especially short.
- We recommend making a full copy of a spreadsheet if there's a certain revision that you'd like to preserve indefinitely.
- Limits to sharing
- Up to 100 people can edit and comment at the same time.
- More than 100 people can view a file, though it’s easier to publish the file and create a link. Learn how to publish a file.
- You can share a file with up to 200 people or groups. If you need to share a file with more than 200 people, add them to a Google Group and share the file with the group.
- If you share a folder with many people, it could take some time before everyone can use it.
Comments
0 comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.