Products · Product
Google Sheets
Raised as a usability problem by 110 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 87 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Sheets lags behind native Excel when interactingUnreviewed
20102026- Sheets lags badly once a spreadsheet reaches about 1000 rows2025-01-21
- Sheet takes forever to load and keypresses or scrolls lag 10+ seconds in Firefox2024-06-20
- Sheets takes a long time to load with the UI frozen in Safari2023-09-11
Spreadsheet sometimes fails to load, and mobile use is poorUnreviewed
20102026- Spreadsheet locks up, cells stop responding, user must constantly reload the page2017-02-17
- Shared spreadsheet takes about 90 seconds to load and crashes computers with memory use2017-01-20
- Spreadsheet became painful once tracking updates and prior conversations2016-01-29
Hard to learn someone else's spreadsheet without being shownUnreviewed
20102026- AI assistant can't answer how-to questions about the spreadsheet2026-02-12
- Hard to learn someone else's spreadsheet without being shown how2025-10-01
- Hard to reach the spreadsheets homepage without remembering the exact sheet2018-05-07
Browser captures keyboard shortcuts instead of the spreadsheetUnreviewed
20102026- Must slow down to check cell selection and browser doesn't intercept shortcuts2024-11-02
- Online-only spreadsheet forces keyboard power users into a worse navigation experience2024-02-29
- Browser grabs keyboard shortcuts instead of the spreadsheet app, hurting usability2021-07-23
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Date parsing behaves unexpectedly, so entering dates takes a long time to figure out2026-09-26
- Slower and has usability issues, so the commenter rejects it2026-04-13
- AI assistant can't answer how-to questions about the spreadsheet2026-02-12
- Sum option hidden in menu bar; users must dig to find it2026-01-23
- Same generic icons reused for different actions, so menu items are hard to tell apart2025-12-09
- Gemini pop-up covers other cells and UI while editing formulas2025-10-26
- Can't import custom CSV; splitting text needs SPLIT formula and awkward copy-paste2025-10-16
- Hard to learn someone else's spreadsheet without being shown how2025-10-01
- Scripting calls are very slow over the network and scripts have run-time limits2025-10-01
- Spreadsheet user interface is considered horrible and cluttered2025-10-01
- Clicking a cell to copy its contents doesn't work, double-click expands it and scrolling gets lost2025-10-01
- Loading database data requires paid plugins, workarounds, and slow, awkward import APIs2025-07-18
- Must press alt+enter to add a new step, and typos go unchecked2025-03-26
- Sheets lags badly once a spreadsheet reaches about 1000 rows2025-01-21
- Popups cover about half the spreadsheet window, blocking the user's work2024-12-23
- Feature announcement popups cover the sheet and must be dismissed before using the document2024-12-23
- Popups repeatedly cover the spreadsheet after it loads, blocking the work2024-12-23
- Popups cover the whole sheet, and users are pushed toward AI features2024-12-23
- Popups cover half the screen and can only be dismissed by clicking a 'got it' button2024-12-23
- Popups fully cover half the screen, making the spreadsheet hard to use on a small display2024-12-23
- Frozen-cell behaviour is confusing and lacks Excel's shortcuts, making the move painful2024-11-02
- Must slow down to check cell selection and browser doesn't intercept shortcuts2024-11-02
- Users struggle with Sheets because it differs from Excel and feels annoying2024-11-02
- Macro painfully slow over thousands of rows, and script stops and must be manually restarted2024-11-02
- Running JavaScript in Sheets makes a network call, so the experience feels laggy2024-09-28
- Complicated chains of cells referencing cells become a messy, hard-to-debug mass2024-09-16
- Many features are hard to reach on the mobile app2024-07-01
- Sheet takes forever to load and keypresses or scrolls lag 10+ seconds in Firefox2024-06-20
- Pressing asterisk in a formula makes the cursor jump left, breaking typing flow2024-06-10
- Date shortcut clears the cell, so date and time can't be combined in one cell2024-05-10
- Visualizations in the spreadsheet-based app are very weak2024-05-06
- Hard to set up, and users can accidentally edit the wrong fields2024-04-12
- Pressing Enter after typing in formula bar wrongly opens the next cell for editing2024-03-04
- After pressing Enter or Esc, cells stay in edit mode so arrow keys don't move the highlight2024-03-04
- Online-only spreadsheet forces keyboard power users into a worse navigation experience2024-02-29
- Google products stuck in account language, can't switch Sheets to English2023-12-13
- Sheets takes a long time to load with the UI frozen in Safari2023-09-11
- Filters don't auto-refresh on edit, and tables must be made manually by painting rows2023-04-17
- Google Sheets scripting docs and syntax are horrendous to work with2023-03-23
- Switching to a separate Apps Script editor makes scripting awkward, so the user avoids it2023-02-16
- Docs mix three outdated library versions, so the user must guess which is correct2022-12-10
- Mouse horizontal scroll wheel does not work in Sheets, unlike other windows2022-10-19
- Takes seconds to open a document and lags behind typing2022-10-18
- Sheets is awful compared to Excel, and work in a browser tab is hard to keep organized2022-10-11
- Identical INDEX/MATCH formula that works in Excel fails to work in Google Sheets2022-10-11
- Scrolling large spreadsheets in web apps is much slower and choppier than native Excel2022-09-01
- Hard to write formulas that return a variable number of matching rows and operate on them2022-08-04
- Sheets auto-links text like created.at, and users must remove links quickly or get sharing blocked2022-06-29
- Users must subscribe on one site and then install the add-on on another2022-06-16
- Easy to accidentally delete lots of data with a mouse click2022-05-31