AndyJarrett

Google Spreadsheet and GooOS

Well I got on to the limited testers for Google spreadsheets. I wanted to try it out as I have a few work related logs which I manage that go around with me on a pen drive, and I thought what better than to have a web based solution.I've been testing it out this morning and so far its more advanced than I thought it would be. The usual functions are there; bold,underline, copy, paste, formulas, multiple worksheet support, and you can even upload(open) you current .xls and .csv files. It also allows you to download all worksheets in a .xls format or download a single sheet in .csv and .html. One other nice feature which I think Excel doesnt have is autosave! Obviously you cannot use macros but this isnt too much of a worry for me as im a basic Excel user. Overall its a good complete (free) spreadsheet editor which also happens to be online, but this does come at a cost. The system seems sluggish which is probably the amout of Ajax they have running in the background with the amount of onscreen information. You also cannot reduce the font which proves annoying when you have a 15+ row sheet even on my 21" 1680x1050 monitor. It is possible to reduce the font using the browser but then you loose the text on the editor button so this doesnt really work but you can of course send Google feedback and suggestions.Looking at it though does remind me of the GooOS posts back in 2004 especially as they have now acquired Writely (an online word processor) recently. Overall for now I'm sticking to Excel and my pen drive and thats not because its a terrible service, having everything online is nice, and it will be the future, but if you need a document and your web connection is down, what you gonna do?