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michaelafischer's avatar
michaelafischer
Copper Contributor
Sep 16, 2020

MS Lists vs Airtable

Hi,

 

I could not find any discussion on Lists missing features or feature requests so far, so I thought I'd create one.

 

I am an avid Airtable Pro user and privately I use it for everything from my ToDos, to my personal finances and real estate management. So naturally I have been missing this functionality in our Microsoft dominated company.

 

After playing with MS Lists for a while, I can say I'm at the same time impressed and dissapointed.

This tool could really be Microsoft's answer to Airtable and with a good cross tool integration it could even make me drop Airtable all together, but to do so, there is a lot of features still needed. Here are a few for starters:

 

1. Group by "Title" and make title a field that can have all field types.

2. Multi-Group: Sometimes I want to group something by multiple columns, e.g. group a customer contact list first by company and then by city.

3. Two way Excel integration. I use a lot of reports where online data is loaded into Excel, so a connected list that automatically updates with Excel would be great (I know it's there from Lists to Excel, but the other way round is more important IMO)

4. Create options on the fly. If I have a selection field I wanna have the option to type in the field and just add that as a new option.

5. Great in line editing. Please MS try to import some of the same lists in Airtable and edit them there vs. in Lists and you'll know what I mean.
6. Cross List linking. Seeing lists as databases is the great UVP of Airtable that currently no other software has. Lists is basically the same thing, but it does not yet make use of this thoughts.


Kind regards,

Michael

  • b_ironstone's avatar
    b_ironstone
    Copper Contributor
    Maybe it's gonna be a late reply but I want to add some points:

    In my perspective, MS lists is the easiest , yet effective data source or database creation tool. But the power of MS lists is not lying on the MS lists itself. It's lying on the environment products like power BI, power Apps and Excel.

    You can literally create a relational database just by loading your MS Lists into power query in either power BI, power Apps or Excel, and you can get full power of DAX and Power query.

    If you need some data to be pulled to the MS Lists, just create a flow with power automate, and it will be done. (yet, excel is never a good data source for anything. not created to be a data source as well.)

    In the bottom line, if you want to do something with the data in the MS lists, don't try it on MS lists itself. Just create, update or delete records in there, treat it as a professional database table or, if you are familiar with, like an MS Access table.

    Then open an Excel sheet, hit the data > get external data> online services > Sharepoint list, enter the place you published your list, and boom. You will see the power query. Even if you know nothing about the power query, just hit the load and you will have the data.

    Do whatever you want after that point. It will be synced with the list and your reports or graphs etc will be automatically updated with the changes in your lists.

    Just an opinion...

    Burak
  • rajesh4life's avatar
    rajesh4life
    Copper Contributor

    michaelafischer Does List don't have filter and group by list name option?

    and what about attachment. Can we attach docs to a record?

    (Asking you as I'm also coming from Airtable.)

    • michaelafischer's avatar
      michaelafischer
      Copper Contributor
      I does, but way less advanced. You can only group by one item for example and you can’t group by the first column
  • ljcolasanto's avatar
    ljcolasanto
    Copper Contributor
    I'm an avid Airtable user as well. It's just tremendously more powerful than Lists. I'm wondering if MS made a mistake in basing Lists on SharePoint as SharePoint is pretty old and so there is probably a lot of technical debt.

    I would actually love to switch to Lists, as my company otherwise uses MS 365 but I currently have a project management system built in Airtable and there's no way I can replicate it in Lists.

    I'd like to add a few features that Lists could use:

    - Better forms. Airtable currently has the ability to share a form that will populate a table based on set parameters. I can't seem to share Lists forms externally, and MS Forms doesn't populate list choice fields very well.
    - The ability to use a calculated field as a Lookup. This is major for me, as having a consistent naming convention for deliverables and tasks is key to our workflow.
    - I would love if Lookups worked two-way rather than just one-way as well.
  • Kevin1941-1995's avatar
    Kevin1941-1995
    Copper Contributor
    Airtable is quite simply better. I hope MS takes a long hard look at improving MS lists ASAP. One example I can think of is date/ time difference calculations:
    1. Much easier to do / input in AirTable
    2. No need to create a flow to add a “helper” column to can accurate reference to “today’s date” consistently.
    3. Much faster. Input is clean and fast on AirTable vs inputting items in MS lists which seems to just be laggy in many situations.

    4. More export options in AirTable vs MS lists.

    5. Overall good idea with a lack of execution from MS on the lists app.
  • timlempicki's avatar
    timlempicki
    Copper Contributor

    michaelafischer I have also been hoping that one day I can move off of Airtable and use Microsoft Lists/SharePoint as a replacement. I have also considered just biting the bullet and setting up our own relational database application/tool so that we can customize it exactly how we want it. It is just a huge time investment in a time when we already are stretched too thin as it is.

     

    I believe that SharePoint lists can definitely do views with Groups inside of Groups. It seems silly that Microsoft Lists wouldn't have the same functionality.

    Lastly, have you checked out Microsoft Flows? I think it is technically part of Power Automate? It enables a lot of functionality and you can build "flows" or workflows using a drag and drop UI. I personally wish it was just a javascript based tool instead, but slowly starting to integrate it where we can to help make our lives easier.

  • sheetlightning's avatar
    sheetlightning
    Copper Contributor

    michaelafischer yes it is so frustrating.

    I believe most of Microsoft's problems come from basing everything on SharePoint. It's old and clunky. Needs a rebuild. 

     

    The team that built Lists seemed like a rebel cell that 'got it done' with little support, but seem to have run out of steam. 

     

    Microsoft needs a Kevin Feige type person who's job is to make sure all the apps work together, and that there's a strategy to create a cohesive ecosystem that you can run your business on. That's intuitive to use. 

     

    As others have said here, why don't the Lists team use Airtable for a bit and then get stuck in to some updates? Same would go for Excel and Power Apps. 

  • QDI_Seth's avatar
    QDI_Seth
    Copper Contributor

    As someone who leans into SharePoint now with the Modern build, Power Automate, and Power B, and more... it seems like there isn't much SharePoint Lists can't do without a bit of work... That's the problem though this list highlights all the things that Microsoft's team should be doing to ensure is available more readily and not needing an Automation.

    Avoiding AT and using an Enterprise funded App saves companies thousands! Worth noting, bet there's a whole other list of things AirTable can't do that SharePoint Lists does. For example, AirTable embedded in sites or Sharepoint only allows read only views for example, if edit is possible a license is needed. Meanwhile SharePoint Lists embed automatically and all users with access can edit/view with no additional costs.

     

     

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