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Judy G. Russell
August 31st, 2006, 12:05 AM
Is there any kind of Excel freeware clone out there anywhere, or a reasonably priced shareware clone? I could sure use it...

Thanks!

davidh
August 31st, 2006, 04:54 AM
Is there any kind of Excel freeware clone out there anywhere, or a reasonably priced shareware clone? I could sure use it...

Thanks! Both Open Office 1.x and 2.x *and* Google spreadsheets ONLINE will read and save files in XLS and CSV formats. The spreadsheets I've tried are NOT sophisticated. YMMV.

On Google, you can share online spreadsheets with other google members of your choice and you can collaboratively modify the spreadsheets in real time with your collaborators using google text chat.

http://spreadsheets.google.com

I would not recommend Open Office in case you plan to share your spreadsheets with someone running OO on a slow CPU or small disk computer. In that case, if you just want to let them view your spreadsheets, better to have them download Microsoft Excel viewer (free). Of course OO runs on Windows *and* UNIX/Linux (and other os's?).

BTW, "Google Apps for Your Domain" may add other apps (such as spreadsheets) in addition to those now available. From what I understand so far, it seems that a small profit or non-profit business or educational organization can run a simple web site with merely paying the cost of registering a domain, provided that the third party registering/hosting company lets you modify your CNAME record(s). That is, without additional hosting charges, provided the third party hosting company provides such a "plan". (Yahoo has had domains for sale at $3/yr. for up to 5 years, but I don't know the details. AFAIK, google does NOT do domain registration.) Apps for your domain is a beta product, but IIRC they say that they will let you run your site, etc. for free AFTER the end of the beta, if you sign up now. If you already have your own site, you can sign up now and start experimenting a bit, without having to actually move your LIVE site over to google.

dh

Judy G. Russell
August 31st, 2006, 08:58 AM
Thanks, David. For what I need, I think Open Office should do it.

davidh
August 31st, 2006, 11:43 AM
Thanks, David. For what I need, I think Open Office should do it.
Be sure to get the latest release.

There were some security fixes recently.

dh

davidh
August 31st, 2006, 11:46 AM
Thanks, David. For what I need, I think Open Office should do it.
You might want the MS Excel viewer too, to make sure your docs render ok in the MS software, if that's of interest to you.

dh

Judy G. Russell
August 31st, 2006, 09:09 PM
Got it, and got the Excel viewer, and then (sigh...) discovered I do have Excel on the notebook already. (It was prepped by my office IT people and I didn't have a clue that they'd installed it.)

Lindsey
August 31st, 2006, 09:27 PM
Got it, and got the Excel viewer, and then (sigh...) discovered I do have Excel on the notebook already. (It was prepped by my office IT people and I didn't have a clue that they'd installed it.)
Ah, that makes more sense. I was rather surprised that you didn't have it. MS Office came bundled with my PC.

--Lindsey

Judy G. Russell
August 31st, 2006, 10:00 PM
It frankly didn't occur to me, because I really haven't had any use for a spreadsheet. But there it was, sitting there, minding its own business...

Lindsey
September 1st, 2006, 03:44 PM
It frankly didn't occur to me, because I really haven't had any use for a spreadsheet. But there it was, sitting there, minding its own business...
Around the first of the year, I started laying out some of my genealogical data in spreadsheets -- things like city directory listings -- just to give myself a better overall picture than was possible with a lot of loose notes. It's been helpful in tracking who was where over what period of time.

More recently, the census transcriptions I've been working on use a spreadsheet template for entering the data.

I'd really like to get more proficient with spreadsheets; they can be marvellous tools, but up until now, like you, I simply haven't had much occasion to use one.

--Lindsey