web20 online-tools spreadsheet
Google began accepting sign-ups to participate in a limited public beta test earlier this month (check Google labs for link). Basically it’s not Excel killer, there are no PivotTables, there’s no charting, and apart from sorting, you can’t do much with text. But there’s a lot more functionality than you might expect. Google Spreadsheets’ user interface, functions support, collaboration features and performance are all strengths.

You can use Spreadsheets to work with your pre-existing worksheets (either native Microsoft Office Excel .xls or comma-separated-value .csv files) by uploading them to Spreadsheets. You can also save a Spreadsheets worksheet to your hard drive and convert it to an .xls or .csv file. Be prepared to lose some formatting, such as row height and column width, when saving to .xls format. You can also create an HTML file of your worksheet as a read-only file.

Spreadsheets’ features formatting capabilities, formulas calculations (most Excel functions are supported) — basically all generic features spreadsheets supposed to have. But something that goes beyond regular Excel experience is teaming. Sharing worksheets is currently limited to sending invitational e-mails to Google Gmail account holders. You can invite people to view or edit a worksheet. Invitees with view permission click a link in the e-mail message to load the worksheet, and they’ll be able to view changes in real time. An instant-messaging chat window also pops up automatically to let you swap comments as you work. If your sent a colleague an invite with edit permission, both of you can edit the document at the same time, creating a very useful and simple collaboration process