SPO Lists VS Excel File

“Are SharePoint Lists better then Excel Files?” or “Why shloud I use a SharePoint list intead Excel Files?”

These are 2 of the most asked question of my customers/students.

First of all, in my opinion there isn’t  “best technology” or best “solutions” for all problems. There is more appropriate solution for your problem (or budget :-) ), so the “key” is: know different options to choose the most appropriate.

With these premises, let’s me explain some reasons why, personally, generally I prefer SPO List, intead Excel files.

1. List item versioning. SharePoint can store N versions on your list item, so you can see differents beetwneen versiones and restore previus version of item. Isn’t this cool?
2. Set item level permissions. You can decide , for each list item, who can see or edit it.
3. Different views. You can create different views of list. Users can create personal view with filters ,group or sort by columns.
4. Save author, last modified user, created date , last edit date. Automatically, for each rows. 
5. Better integration with Power Automate & Power Apps, so your simple list becomes part of business process.

Have a good day!