Your decision criteria could focus on how you want to manipulate the data
and how you want to publish it.

Excel is better for manipulating the data, as it is easier to sort by
column, filter by content, and perform arithmetic on numerical values than
Word. Word is better for typographical formatting (eg fonts), but it gets
difficult if your table is bigger than Word's idea of a page. Excel allows
for many rows and many columns. In most cases, and in almost all cases
where any of the values are numerical, your better choice is Excel.

However, both fail if you want to easily publish the document for people to
consume on the internet (either to use it or to contribute to it). For
that, I would recommend (free) Google Sheets, which has most of the
strengths of Excel but also allows you to publish ("share") the document.
You can share it either with specific other people with Google Accounts for
collaboration, or you can open up the restrictions on any document so that
you can send the link to the document to anybody who can then see it.

Another advantage of the online publishing model is that people retrieving
the document always get the latest version - handy if you find a mistake or
want to add more information after your initial publication.

Stay safe and dry.

Regards,

       David.

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 3:57 PM charles meyer <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> My esteemed listmates,
>
> Life and work have been so crazy in the aftermath of the hurricane we are
> still recovering from.
>
> I searched my Gmail messages for the past 2 weeks but did not see this post
> so I apologize it has been posted.
>
> I'm curious what factors influence you in choosing to create a Word file
> versus an Excel spreadsheet or vice versa?
>
> Ex. I'm creating a spreadsheet with the names of banks and credit unions -
> contact names and phone #s and a list  of 9 questions to ask each financial
> institution before opening a checking account with any of them.
>
> We have a number of homeless and others on Social Security and Soc Sec
> disability who need free checking accounts. $15/mo is a lot ofr them to
> pay.
>
> But, would it be better to create this as a Word document with columns?
>
> Or still better to create as a Word document with tables?
>
> How does one decide?
>
> Thank you so much.
>
> Charles.
>
> Charlotte County Public Library
>