Google has an online version of Microsoft’s Excel Spreadsheet software to compliment their online word processor. Called Google Spreadsheets, it is an addition to their already released Google Docs (a converted tool from the company Writely they acquired last year).

With Google Spreadsheets, you can now enjoy intuitive online navigation and editing, like any traditional document or spreadsheet from any computer having access to the internet. I am not sure when this was released to the public as it was on ‘limited beta’ in June last year.

Spreadsheet documents can be saved online to your Google account or to your hard drive. Each spreadsheet can be up to 10,000 rows, 256 columns, 50,000 cells or up to 20 sheets whichever limit comes first. A user account has a limit of 100 spreadsheets and you can import/ convert xls, csv and odf file formats up to 1 Mb.

Cell formulas and other Excel based functions work seamlessly and a frequent user of Microsoft Excel will find it an easy transition.

Additional features that I really like

- you can actually chat in real time with others who are editing your spreadsheet

- the collaborating feature i.e. you can share the spreadsheet with limitless other users for editing and reviewing.

- if you have accidentally erased something important or if you want to see how the spreadsheet has changed over time, you click on the revisions tab to browser older versions, view major changes or revert to an earlier saved version.

- when you are finished with your spreadsheet, you can automatically publish (or un-publish) it online with one click to your website or blog — and it’ll look like a normal looking web page. If you post to a blog, you can add tags as well.

Browsers that are currently supported

1. IE 6.0+ for Windows (except IE 6.0.26)
2. Firefox 1.07, 1.5.0.6+ (Mac & Windows — except for 1.0.8 on Windows and Mac, and 1.5b1 on Mac)
3. Mozilla 1.7.12+
4. Netscape 7.2, 8.0

(sorry Safari and Opera users!)

For a free online tool, it is powerful indeed for the light, medium user – Microsoft better watch out! I don’t anticipate it challenging businesses users due to the security factors involved but with Bill Gates predicting that his next generation office/ operating systems being virtually run, Google may have already jumped ahead of the game.