Why Your Gear Spreadsheet Isn't Working

Spreadsheets are great — for spreadsheet things

Let's be honest: if you just need to track serial numbers, purchase dates, and warranty info for insurance purposes, a spreadsheet is perfect. Rows and columns. Sort and filter. Done.

But that's not what most people are doing with their gear spreadsheets. They're trying to use them as shareable gear pages — and that's where things fall apart.

Where spreadsheets fail for gear

No photos. You can technically embed images in a spreadsheet. In practice, nobody does, and when they do, it looks broken. Gear is visual. A list of product names without images is a parts manifest, not a gear page.

No context. A spreadsheet cell fits a product name, maybe a price. It doesn't have room for "I switched to this after three years with the previous model and the autofocus difference alone was worth it." The story behind each pick is the thing people actually care about, and spreadsheets have no natural place for it.

Ugly sharing. Send someone a Google Sheets link and watch what happens. They see a grid of cells with column headers like "Item" and "Price" and "Category." It doesn't feel like a curated collection. It feels like homework.

No public URL that looks good. A published Google Sheet has a URL that's 80 characters of random letters. It doesn't render well on mobile. It doesn't have a thumbnail when shared on social media. It's functional and nothing more.

No product links with previews. You can paste URLs into cells, but they show up as raw text or plain hyperlinks. No product images, no price previews, no retailer logos. Just blue underlined text in a cell.

No logical grouping. You can sort by column or use colored rows as dividers, but there's no real concept of "sections" in a spreadsheet. Gear naturally groups into categories — and a flat table fights that organization.

No mobile experience. Open a shared Google Sheet on your phone. Pinch and scroll through tiny cells. Try to tap a product link. It's not designed for this.

What sharing gear actually requires

When someone asks "what do you use?" and you want to give them a real answer, you need:

• Product photos. Images of the actual items, ideally your own.
• Organization. Logical sections that let people scan for what they care about.
• Context. Why you chose each thing, not just what it is.
• Links. Direct paths to buy the same item, not raw URLs in a cell.
• A clean URL. Something you can put in a bio or text to a friend.
• Mobile-friendly layout. Most people will view it on their phone.

A spreadsheet gives you none of this. It gives you data storage. Different job.

Moving from spreadsheet to gear page

If you already have a gear spreadsheet (and there's no shame in that — it means you care about your stuff), here's how to turn it into something shareable on Teed:

1. Create a bag. Name it after the collection: "Studio Gear," "Golf Bag," "EDC," whatever matches your spreadsheet.

2. Set up sections. Look at how your spreadsheet is organized — by category, by location, by use case. Turn those groupings into sections.

3. Add items. You have a few fast paths:

• If your spreadsheet has product URLs, copy them and use bulk import to paste multiple links at once. Teed will extract product details from each link.
• If you just have product names, type them in and search. Photos and details get filled in automatically.
• If you have the items physically nearby, snap photos and upload them. AI identification handles the rest.

4. Add your notes. Go through each item and add a sentence or two about why you chose it. This is the part the spreadsheet was missing — the human context that makes a gear list worth reading.

5. Share the URL. Your page is now a permanent, clean URL that looks good on any device, renders a proper preview on social media, and lets visitors actually see and understand your gear.

Keep the spreadsheet if you want

This isn't about abandoning spreadsheets. If you track purchase dates, prices paid, warranty expiration, and depreciation — keep that spreadsheet. It's doing what spreadsheets do best.

But for the outward-facing version — the page you share when someone asks what you use — you need something built for sharing, not data entry. That's a different tool for a different job.

See also: Teed vs Spreadsheets — a detailed feature comparison.