4 Free Spreadsheet Alternatives to Microsoft Excel - Page 2

Zoho Sheet

The second cloud application in this round up is Zoho Sheet. Some of the Zoho small business apps are free and others require payment. Once you've signed in for a free account, select Productivity Apps > Sheet to launch the free spreadsheet tool. In Zoho, all the applications are separate, so there is no dashboard style interface that gives you access to everything. In this way, Zoho operates similarly to Excel and unlike Google Docs.

The Zoho spreadsheet application looks very much like Excel 2003 and includes a range of features including macros. (Click for larger image).

Zoho resembles Excel 2003 with a menu bar and a toolbar with icons -- most of which will be familiar to Excel users. On the toolbar you'll find Sort, Insert Function, a Chart tool and an AutoSum function. You can open files from your local computer by choosing File > Import > Import File. You can import a Google Spreadsheet file, or you can work on a file that you have already created in Zoho.

The charting tools in Zoho are pretty much what you'd expect to find in Excel 2003. You can create pivot tables and pivot charts using a tool that works similarly to the PivotTable creation tool in Excel 2003.

You can create a macro in Zoho Sheet that you can then play back later on and the code is recorded using VBA -- this will be familiar to you if you've done any work with VBA or VB previously. You can embed worksheets inside a blog, and you can make them public and share them with others.

If you're looking for the tools that Zoho provides, then this smart, quick and easy-to-use application won't overburden you with features you're never likely to use.

Excel Web App

A year ago the list of free Microsoft Excel alternatives would not have included Excel itself. All this changed with the launch earlier this year of the Microsoft Online Web Apps -- Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word -- all of which are free. Each of these cloud-based small business apps is a cut-down version of the offline application, which means you don’t get access to full Excel compatibility online but you get a good range of its features.

You can open files saved in the new .xlsx and .xlsm formats and view the workbooks even if you can't use some of the features included in them. For example you can view but not edit sparklines, and shapes and VBA code aren't accessible. However you can edit the data that the sparklines are based on and the sparklines will update accordingly.

The Excel Web App gives you a means to create Excel worksheets that you can share and collaborate on with others. You can upload worksheets from your local machine and download them into an offline version of Excel if desired, and you can share worksheets with others online. Like Zoho and Google Docs you will need access to a fast Internet connection for this browse-based app.

If you don't want to shell out money for a full version of Microsoft Office, and if you can live with the subset of features included in the Excel Web App, then it might be a viable application to consider.

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

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