Work smarter in Confluence: Why you don't need to export to Excel

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Just recently, I was asked:

"Why should we use Table Filter, Charts & Spreadsheets for Confluence when we already have a full M365 license, and Excel can create all the pivot tables and charts we need?" 🤔

I assume this question comes up frequently during our app’s evaluation stage. That’s why I decided to address it in this discussion.

First of all, it really depends on where you store your data. ☝🏼

Despite varying opinions, I think Confluence is a great platform that allows your teams to:

• work together without losing context,
• share the results and lessons learned with the entire company,
• build a perfectly searchable tree structure of cohesively formatted content,
• secure sensitive data seamlessly with a robust permission system, where only authorized users can see a protected page.

Therefore, if your company’s knowledge base is in Confluence, it’s more convenient to be able to filter, calculate, and visualize your data without ever leaving your Confluence page, rather than exporting it to Excel and later importing back.

⬇️ Moreover, here’s a list of things Table Filter, Charts & Spreadsheets (in short) can do that Excel can not:

• Pivots, charts, conditional formatting, search, auto-summing, and sparkline charts in native Confluence tables

• Work with Jira Issues/Page Properties Report macros as with tables, convert tables to spreadsheets and vice versa

• Create a whole dashboard from a single source table and reuse it in whole or in parts across Confluence - all data is updated along with the source table, no need to edit the same thing 10 times

❓What are your thoughts on this topic? How often do you use Excel in your day-to-day work?

Click on the link below to watch a full breakdown of all the differences between the two tools.