Google Spreadsheets: Share Your Work - How it Looks and Works: the Basics
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Google Spreadsheets is in limited beta right now, which means you need to request an invite to use it. I did, and received an email welcoming me aboard within 24 hours. So what was the next logical thing to do? Get screenshots, of course. Please bear with me, as I found it difficult to get an entire spreadsheet into one image. (In fact, I had to split it up into two).
This is part of what you see when you first get into the application. It's designed to be pretty intuitive, even for someone like me. Clicking on File gives you a drop-down menu with a collection of familiar options.
I'd like to draw your attention to the "Download" options, specifically "Download as .xls." That option lets you export the spreadsheet you create in Google Spreadsheets to an Excel file. This means you can save it on your own system, neatly bypassing the complaints I've heard raised of "what happens if all my data is on Google and Google crashes?" As with some other Google services that store your data (Google Desktop Search comes to mind), you can still retain the data in your own system. You can also use the .csv format, and yes, you can also import spreadsheets into the application from files in both formats (more on that later).
Clicking on "Choose format" lets you choose from more than a dozen different formats for your data, including plain text, date, time, date and time, and more finance-related formats than you could shake a stick at (percentages, rounded, dollars and cents, and so on). You can use bold, italics, underlining, change fonts, and even color the text and/or the background.
Here's the other half of the spreadsheet.
You can insert and delete rows and columns easily; just click on the appropriate button. As you can see, you can also cut, copy, paste, undo or redo any action. To give you an idea of what a nicely completed spreadsheet looks like in this application, here's an image from Google:
If you're an experienced spreadsheet user, you know what the tabs at the upper left are for. But if you're not, "Sort" brings up a screen that lets you "freeze rows" in place and also lets you sort by column (A to Z or Z to A). "Formulas" brings you to a screen that lets you use various formulas on the cells of your spreadsheet; Google shows the six most popular, but there are more than 200 built in. That should satisfy most of Google's target market for this service.
Overall, building a spreadsheet with Google Spreadsheets seems very natural and intuitive. You just click on the cells you want, and start typing. And of course, you can click on the Help link for any questions you may have.
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