Saturday, February 23, 2008

Totally Wicked - Google Docs SpreadSheet

I had been thinking of trying out Google Docs for a while now but didn't get around to it. Finally I tried it.

Man, some of the features of Google Docs SpreadSheet is totally wicked (yeah, I was just watching "The Incredibles")

  1. Formulas like "GoogleFinance" and "GoogleLookup" are great. Now the spreadsheet will be an alive doc. The use cases of such functionality are numerous. It allows the user to use the power of web in their work context. This is great.
  2. Collaboration: As per my understanding, you can request the cell data to other participants directly from your spreadsheet. Further, the sheet will keep a track of it and iGoogle widget is also available. The other participants do not have to sign in and they could respond directly from an emai. This feature is a sure success.
  3. Freeze Columns & Rows (that is really cool. I primarily use Microsoft Excel and I hate scrolling the spreadsheet just to see a value in a particular column & row. Finally, I end up reducing the zoom on the spreadsheet to see all the values. I can just imagine myself thinking importing the spreadsheet to Google Docs and doing the calculations and then go back again).
  4. As again versioning feature (Revisions).
  5. Collaboration: Multiple people working in the same sheet at the same time. You can see what your collaborators are working on. I am a little skeptic about how this feature will work out.

Obviously, there are a lot of room for improvement. For example, charts, keystrokes, etc. But I would not go into it as it is still in Beta and I am sure there is a whole army of well trained pigeons working on it :-)

I love the next innovation in Spreadsheet (primarily because of GoogleFinance & GoogleLookup).

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