Google Spreadsheets Now Available in Beta

[applefan]

http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/06/07/1674435.htm

Those with gmail accounts can sign up for an invitation. I recieved mine overnight. Safari is not supported, but Firefox and Camino are. It's still pretty simple in terms of usability and features.

 

[Doctor Q]

Those who want to skip the news story can go directly to the Google Spreadsheets page.

Quote:

Google Spreadsheets is currently compatible with the following browsers:

- IE 6 (Windows)
- FireFox 1.07+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)

We currently don't support other browsers. To get the full functionality of Google Spreadsheets, we recommend that you have the latest version of your browser. Please note that you'll need to enable JavaScript in order to view and edit Google Spreadsheets.​

 

[dejo]

What kind of Web standards are they using that IE6 and Firefox can handle it but Safari can't? Where does Safari fall short? I'm curious.

 

[bousozoku]

I had decent success with it, although it seemed to lock up when I renamed the sheet but I was able to open it again and close the original tab.

Note the chat window beside the spreadsheet itself.

I downloaded a version in Excel format but it won't open correctly in AppleWorks with MacLink Plus. I have yet to try OpenOffice.

 

[count chocula]

thanks! i'm signed up and hopefully they'll email me soon.

 

[X5-452]

And the Google world domination continues...

Oh well. I love Google, I'm not complaining. Although I have nothing to spreadsheet, it looks promising. Google should make more things install based though, rather than so dependant on the internet. I'm sure creating spreadsheets offline would be an asset to any business person.

 

[Bubbasteve]

Well I guess you could call today Beta Thursday with Vista and Google Spreadsheets....or you don't have to, either way it's ok with me.

 

[robbieduncan]

Those who want to skip the news story can go directly to the Google Spreadsheets page.

Quote:

Google Spreadsheets is currently compatible with the following browsers:

- IE 6 (Windows)
- FireFox 1.07+ (Windows, Mac, Linux)

We currently don't support other browsers. To get the full functionality of Google Spreadsheets, we recommend that you have the latest version of your browser. Please note that you'll need to enable JavaScript in order to view and edit Google Spreadsheets.​

When I tried to log in this morning (my invite just arrived, I don't use GMail) on Safari others were listed including Camino. So basically it looks like IE or Gecko only at the moment.

 

[Doctor Q]

You're right. When I got my invitation and logged in, I got this list:

IE 6.0+
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7+
Mozilla 1.7.12+
Netscape 7.2, 8.0
Camino 1.0+​

Netscape 7!?

 

[Doctor Q]

Here are the builtin functions that Google Spreadsheets provides:

Math

ABS
ACOS
ACOSH
ASIN
ASINH
ATAN
ATAN2
ATANH
CEILING
COMBIN
COS
COSH
COUNT
COUNTA
COUNTBLANK
COUNTIF
DEGREES
EVEN
EXP
FACT
FACTDOUBLE
FLOOR
GCD
INT
LCM
LN
LOG
LOG10
MDETERM
MINVERSE
MMULT
MOD
MROUND
MULTINOMIAL
ODD
PI
POWER
PRODUCT
QUOTIENT
RADIANS
RAND
RANDBETWEEN
ROUND
ROUNDDOWN
ROUNDUP
SERIESSUM
SIGN
SIN
SINH
SQRT
SQRTPI
SUM
SUMIF
SUMPRODUCT
SUMSQ
SUMX2MY2
SUMX2PY2
SUMXMY2
TAN
TANH
TRUNC​

Financial

ACCRINT
ACCRINTM
COUPDAYBS
COUPDAYS
COUPDAYSNC
COUPNCD
COUPNUM
COUPPCD
CUMIPMT
CUMPRINC
DB
DDB
DISC
DOLLARDE
DOLLARFR
DURATION
EFFECT
FV
FVSCHEDULE
IPMT
IRR
MDURATION
MIRR
NOMINAL
NPER
NPV
PMT
PPMT
PRICE
PRICEDISC
PRICEMAT
PV
RATE
RECEIVED
SLN
SYD
TBILLEQ
TBILLPRICE
TBILLYIELD
XIRR
XNPV
YIELD
YIELDDISC
YIELDDISC​

Logical

AND
IF
NOT
OR​

Date

DATE
DATEVALUE
DAY
DAYS360
EDATE
EOMONTH
MONTH
NETWORKDAYS
TODAY
WEEKDAY
WORKDAY
YEAR
YEARFRAC​

Lookup

ADDRESS
CHOOSE
COLUMN
COLUMNS
HLOOKUP
INDIRECT
OFFSET
ROW
ROWS
TRANSPOSE
VLOOKUP​

Statistical

AVEDEV
AVERAGE
AVERAGEA
BINOMDIST
CONFIDENCE
CORREL
COVAR
CRITBINOM
DEVSQ
EXPONDIST
FISHER
FISHERINV
FORECAST
FREQUENCY
GEOMEAN
GROWTH
HARMEAN
HYPGEOMDIST
INTERCEPT
KURT
LARGE
LINEST
LOGEST
LOGINV
LOGNORMDIST
MAX
MAXA
MEDIAN
MIN
MINA
MODE
NEGBINOMDIST
NORMDIST
NORMINV
NORMSDIST
NORMSINV
PEARSON
PERCENTILE
PERCENTRANK
PERMUT
POISSON
PROB
QUARTILE
RANK
RSQ
SKEW
SLOPE
SMALL
STANDARDIZE
STDEV
STDEVA
STDEVP
STDEVPA
STEYX
TREND
TRIMMEAN
VAR
VARA
VARP
VARPA
WEIBULL
ZTEST​

Text

CHAR
CODE
CONCATENATE
DOLLAR
EXACT
FIND
FIXED
LEFT
LEN
LOWER
MATCH
MID
PROPER
REPLACE
REPT
RIGHT
SEARCH
SUBSTITUTE
T
TEXT
TRIM
UPPER
VALUE​

Info

ERRORTYPE
ISBLANK
ISERR
ISERROR
ISEVEN
ISLOGICAL
ISNA
ISNONTEXT
ISNUMBER
ISODD
ISREF
ISTEXT
N
NA​

 

[Doctor Q]

Features and quirks I've noticed so far:

* You can "copy down" a formula in a column by selecting a cell with the formula, using the COPY button, selecting the rest of the range, and using the PASTE button.

* When you merge two horizontally-adjacent cells, you can no longer apply formatting separately to their columns.

* It doesn't show you the coordinates of the cell you have selected, e.g., B2.

* I see no cursor while doing in-cell editing, which is how formulas are entered or changed.

* If you don't save a spreadsheet and try to open a new or previous spreadsheet, it opens a separate browser window and leaves the current one as is.

* If you open a drop-down list, you can't close it by clicking again on the title of the drop-down list.

* It has multiple levels of Undo.

* When I added a second worksheet to a spreadsheet and then tried to delete the second worksheet, I got the message "Updating..." but it never came back. I guess I crashed the program!

 

[backupdrummer]

I played with it and it was interesting. Kinda clumsy and nothing that made me go wow.

Also the lack of any charting is a killer.

 

[bousozoku]

Formatting is poor right now. From what I saw, you can only use their pre-defined formats. Also, the formatted data was either not exported properly or for some other reason, could not be interpreted on opening the spreadsheet in AppleWorks with MacLink Plus or OpenOffice.

 

[theBB]

I wish Google actually implemented few new services fully, instead of doing a lot of half-baked ones. Google Maps came with great new features, but some of the easy ones, such as the ability to save some addresses etc. are still on their to do list. It's been two years, come on now...