Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

Google Spreadsheets

Red Herring magazine has an article called 17 MS Office Killers that covers web office applications.

Fresh from the Google Labs, we’ve got Google Spreadsheets. Google Spreadsheets has been in testing through an invitation-only beta since June. But it appears that they’re starting to roll it out for the rest of us. You can click the screenshot below to view a larger version.

Google Spreadsheets screen shot

Google Spreadsheets do most of what you would expect: formulas, column sorting, the ability to change font styles, column widths, and number formats. You can add multiple sheets to one file. And you can also save and retrieve saved files.

Google Spreadsheets also allows you to export or import Excel or CSV spreadsheets. You can also export as an HTML file. (As an aside, it’s startlingly easy to create dynamic Excel spreadsheet files for download. You just need to generate some special Microsoft-proprietary HTML and save the document with an .xls extension.)

Of course, since it’s web-based, you can also share the spreadsheet, which allows others to view and/or edit your file. They’ll need a Google account though. Those without a Google account will be prompted to create one.

So far Google Spreadsheets works with Internet Explorer 6.0+, and Gecko-based browsers — Firefox, Mozilla, Camino, and Netscape. Opera, and Safari users are S.O.L. for the time being.

I haven’t toyed around with Google Spreadsheets much. But if you’ve used it or another online spreadsheet service, let us know in the comments.

If you haven’t used an online documents service, what would get you to use one or keep you from using one?

Other online spreadsheet services

Related online business software

I’m sure there are more if you just care to run a Google search.

  • https://blogs.zoho.com/ Sridhar Vembu

    Tiffany,
    Thanks for mentioning Zoho Writer. Check out Zoho Sheet http://zohosheet.com as well.

    Sridhar

  • https://blogs.zoho.com Sridhar Vembu

    Tiffany,
    Thanks for mentioning Zoho Writer. Check out Zoho Sheet http://zohosheet.com as well.

    Sridhar

  • http://7andacrescent.com/ viperteq

    Thanks for posting all this great info. I use Google Calendar/Gmail for keeping track of most of my information and I use Backpack from 37Signals to keep a track of my Notes/To-Do lists. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, i had been thinking of starting my own wiki, but now that you’ve shown me JotSpot, I may have to go with that.

    Oh yeah, stop by the blog sometime….I’m rocking some new threads!

  • http://7andacrescent.com viperteq

    Thanks for posting all this great info. I use Google Calendar/Gmail for keeping track of most of my information and I use Backpack from 37Signals to keep a track of my Notes/To-Do lists. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, i had been thinking of starting my own wiki, but now that you’ve shown me JotSpot, I may have to go with that.

    Oh yeah, stop by the blog sometime….I’m rocking some new threads!

  • http://negroplease.com/ Jason

    I was just thinking about google spreadsheets as an option for working on a project calendar for something I’m doing at work. I don’t have MS Office on my mac at home and haven’t had much success with Open Office so I wanted a web based solution. These are great options.

    The only productivity software I use online is Google Calendar. I’ve used backpack and basecamp in the past from 37signals but haven’t had much use for them recently.

    Basecamp is pretty damn awesome though as a group project management tool.

  • http://negroplease.com Jason

    I was just thinking about google spreadsheets as an option for working on a project calendar for something I’m doing at work. I don’t have MS Office on my mac at home and haven’t had much success with Open Office so I wanted a web based solution. These are great options.

    The only productivity software I use online is Google Calendar. I’ve used backpack and basecamp in the past from 37signals but haven’t had much use for them recently.

    Basecamp is pretty damn awesome though as a group project management tool.

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    OpenOffice for Mac is horrible. But there’s a port called NeoOffice that uses native Mac OS X commands and doesn’t require X11 to be installed.

    Obviously it isn’t web-based, which is a definite downside.

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    OpenOffice for Mac is horrible. But there’s a port called NeoOffice that uses native Mac OS X commands and doesn’t require X11 to be installed.

    Obviously it isn’t web-based, which is a definite downside.

  • http://www.rashidmuhammad.com/ Rashid Z. Muhammad

    I love the idea of online spreadhseets.

    For me, the biggest thing for would be graphs as all that I ever use excel or calc for these days is data analysis and reporting on such analysis. This is assuming that the relavent analytical and financial formulas (e.g. mean, stdev, pmt, etc) are built in.

  • http://www.rashidmuhammad.com Rashid Z. Muhammad

    I love the idea of online spreadhseets.

    For me, the biggest thing for would be graphs as all that I ever use excel or calc for these days is data analysis and reporting on such analysis. This is assuming that the relavent analytical and financial formulas (e.g. mean, stdev, pmt, etc) are built in.

  • http://www.rashidmuhammad.com/ Rashid Z. Muhammad

    What would also be cool is the ability to hook a custom function call into an external web service.

  • http://www.rashidmuhammad.com Rashid Z. Muhammad

    What would also be cool is the ability to hook a custom function call into an external web service.

  • Alan Tam

    Did you forget about http://www.editgrid.com/ ?

  • Alan Tam

    Did you forget about http://www.editgrid.com/ ?

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    Hadn’t heard of EditGrid. Thanks for posting.

  • http://www.tiffanybbrown.com/ tiffany

    Hadn’t heard of EditGrid. Thanks for posting.