LOL. Another way Scrivener doesn't quite meet the mark is in the requirement that it be installed on a local hard drive. Yes, you can use dropbox for cloud access but it still requires you to have a Scrivener installation at all the access points. I write from my laptop, my phone, my tablet, and on occasion, a computer at work because my laptop battery died. And, sadly, my primary laptop is a Chromebook, with which Scrivener is not compatible.

If there were an app version, I'd be all over it. Jedi Moose pointed me to the Gingko app, which looks like it might be what I'm seeking, but I'm too busy to convert at this point.

A problem with Excel (or Google Sheets) is that it doesn't handle large chunks of text very well. For instance, say I have a character database, and I store character descriptions from the snippets of text where I first described them. I might write two or three sentences, a small paragraph, describing a character. It just doesn't fit nicely in a spreadsheet. It's too much data. In that, a database would be better.

Another way a database is superior is in relational connections. In a database, I could create a list of my characters using a pre-formatted template that I use for all my characters. Then when I'm listing my scenes, I can link a related character to the scene. Then I can query my data and list all the scenes featuring a particular character. Databases are very powerful creatures if you know how to use them, but I need a cloud-based database that's customized for large writing projects, and preferably one that I don't personally have to design.

Once again, I'm asking for too much, aren't I?

Cheers,
Michelle