Harry Potter Top Series: Top 10 free Microsoft Excel alternatives

Monday, December 6, 2010

Top 10 free Microsoft Excel alternatives

Microsoft Excel is one the most commonly used spreadsheet application. It comes as an integrated part of the Office package. It has been the favorite of many specially for the people working with numbers. One thing that is to be considered for use of Excel is that one has to buy the Microsoft office package in order to use Excel. If given a close thought we have many other free alternatives to the Excel package which offers nearly the same features probably in a little different manner.

Following are the top 10 free Excel alternatives available :

1) OpenOffice Calc : This is the one of the best available alternates for the Excel application. It is also capable of many advanced features which can provide you many tools to manage your figures and data in a more effective manner.

2) Google Spreadsheets : This is an online browser based spreadsheet application which allows you to import excel sheets and share them online and even work on them offline and then sync it up later. Ofcourse you need the internet connectivity to use it.

3) Kspread : Is an integrated part of the Koffice package mainly developed for the Linux users. It is a fully featured calculation and spreadsheet tool. You can create shapes for notes and create flowcharts and mindmaps too.

4) Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets : A great alternative with a great collection of productivity tools that are quite easy to use and happily provided at no extra charge.

5) Simple spreadsheet : A web based spreadsheet application that has all features like charts, formulas, numeric formats etc. It was developed using Javascript, HTML. And the best thing ofcourse its free.

6) ZcubesCalci : Is a web based calculation package with many features of a typical spreadsheet. It has a large collection of scientific, statistical and financial functions making it a real powerful tool than the other applications.

7) ZohoSheets : The best advantage of zoho sheets is that it allows many users to work on a single spreadsheet file simultaneously which give it an edge of a different kind in comparison to other spreadsheet applications. You can create, edit and access your spreadsheet from any where and share it with anyone.

8). EditGrid : It becomes a great easy to use working tool with many of the excel features found in the package. Its basically an online spreadsheet service which provides data on demand. Its at time more helpful than excel as it is usually connected to live data resources and hence it easy for sharing and collaboration as these features are provided inbuilt.

9) Spread32 : This is a light spreadsheet program with many basic features. Though it doesn’t have many advanced features like many other in the market is quite helpful in many situations. It support sorting with multiples keys, freezing panes etc.

10) Cleansheets : Is developed using Java and hence a Java Runtime Environment is essential before you can use the application. It uses a formula language thats quite similar to the Microsoft Excel. This is an application that is platform independent an extensible too.