Esther Shein, CFO.com | US
August 21, 2006

Google Spreadsheet

Google spreadsheet was useful in sharing information with a family member that uses a computer without Excel. I had no trouble exporting my Excel files to Google. But I did not have good success in downloading the Google spreadsheet back into Excel. There were numerous formula errors and, in the end, much of my work had to be entered again in a new Excel file.

Posted by Philip Weiss | Sep 7, 2006 11:25 AM ET

Google Spreadsheet-better than nothing

As the article noted, formatting a Google spreadsheet is a pain - not just punctuation, etc., but right-justifying numbers throughout.

But it does accurately import and export Excel files. I don't know about other formats.

Where it is useful is in being able to instantly send financial information to people who don't have MS Office - for use on their home computer, for instance. Actually what you do is save the spreadsheet in your Google "account", and then authorize ("invite") the other user to view and/or edit the file. In that respect it works like Yahoo Briefcase, for example. But with Yahoo Briefcase, the other user would have to have Excel on his/her system.

Posted by William Ahlstrom | Sep 6, 2006 4:34 PM ET