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Spreadsheets redux June 8, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : google , trackback

I’ve now had the opportunity to play with Google Spreadsheets a bit more and I have to say… wow.

The user experience is pretty snappy as long as you have a speedy connection with low latency. Its very impressive for a web-app. Plenty of screenshots are available on Flickr.

The Excel import ‘just works’, although if there are hidden rows/columns in the XLS that is uploaded there does not appear to be a way to make them visible again.

There is a huge list of functions available;

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,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,AND,IF,NOT,OR,DATE,DATEVALUE,DAY,DAYS360,
EDATE,EOMONTH,MONTH,NETWORKDAYS,TODAY,WEEKDAY,
WORKDAY,YEAR,YEARFRAC,ADDRESS,CHOOSE,COLUMN,COLUMNS,
HLOOKUP,INDIRECT,OFFSET,ROW,ROWS,TRANSPOSE,VLOOKUP,
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,
CHAR,CODE,CONCATENATE,DOLLAR,EXACT,FIND,FIXED,LEFT,LEN,
LOWER,MATCH,MID,PROPER,REPLACE,REPT,RIGHT,SEARCH,
SUBSTITUTE,T,TEXT,TRIM,UPPER,VALUE,ERRORTYPE,ISBLANK,
ISERR,ISERROR,ISEVEN,ISLOGICAL,ISNA,ISNONTEXT,ISNUMBER,
ISODD,ISREF,ISTEXT,N,NA

Is this the same set as Excel? Based on a quick survey I think it is exactly the same. I assume that they all work! There is no online help for the functions just yet. Consult the Excel help file in the meantime!

I’m looking forward to a simple RESTful API to HTTP POST a value to a workbook/sheet/row/column, have Google recalculate the spreadsheet, and HTTP GET a value back down to a mash-up. How about subscribing to an RSS feed from a particular cell? How about a function for populating a cell from a web service? Would any of these features have any practical value or just result in a Rube Goldberg-like impossible contraption? I have no idea but it would be fun to try it out!

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