Comparison of spreadsheet software
Encyclopedia
Online versus Desktop
Web-based spreadsheets do not in general depend on a particular operating systemOperating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
or similar constraints and are therefore generally more portable by their nature than desktop applications.
Collaborative spreadsheets
Generally, online spreadsheets offer spreadsheet sharing and public sharing as part of their features which enables collaboration between multiple users.Remote data update
Some on-line spreadsheets provide "remote data update" allowing data values to be extracted from other users' spreadsheets even though they may be inactive at the time.Gnumeric
Gnumeric
Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released December 31, 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU GPL license; it is intended to replace proprietary and other spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft...
(listed below as a desktop spreadsheet) is also used as the "back-end" processor in at least one on-line spreadsheet application (Editgrid
EditGrid
EditGrid is a Web 2.0 spreadsheet service. It offers both a free-of-charge service to personal users and a subscription service to organisations and is available on a number of partner sites and channels....
).
Online spreadsheets
The following tables only provide a comparison of desktop spreadsheetSpreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
applications.
For a list and links to comparisons of online (web-based) spreadsheets, see List of online spreadsheets.
Google spreadsheets
Google spreadsheets can be accessed from the documents window Google docs. To create a spreadsheet, the user must create an account.Once with an account, the user can create a spreadsheet from scratch, or import data from an external spreadsheet or other sources. An example spreadsheet can be found here.
The spreadsheet has the capability of being read and worked on directly by using a web link. If the originating author elects that option, multiple authors can work on the same spreadsheet.
The capabilities of the spreadsheet have been perceived to be quite limited in comparison to, for example, Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
. Google spreadsheet does not allow the use of named variables, and until recently had nothing comparable to Excel's programming feature (Visual Basic for Applications
Visual Basic for Applications
Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 and its associated integrated development environment , which are built into most Microsoft Office applications...
), but now Google Spreadsheets supports Javascript-based formulas that are quite powerful and expressive.
General
| Screenshot | Creator | Development started | First public release | Latest stable version | Cost (USD United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... ) |
License | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gnumeric Gnumeric Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released December 31, 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU GPL license; it is intended to replace proprietary and other spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft... |
 |
GNOME GNOME GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software... community |
1998 | 1998 | 1.10.13 / 2011-02-03 | GPL | |
| IBM Lotus Symphony IBM Lotus Symphony IBM Lotus Symphony is a suite of applications for creating, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations and other documents, and is currently distributed as freeware. First released in 2007, the suite has a name similar to the 1980s DOS suite Lotus Symphony, but the two programs are... |
IBM IBM International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas... |
2008 | 1.3 / 2009 | Proprietary | |||
| KSpread KSpread Tables is a free software spreadsheet application that is part of Calligra Suite, an integrated graphic art and office suite by KDE.Among Tables's features are multiple sheets per document, assorted formatting possibilities, support for more than 300 built-in functions, templates, chart,... |
 |
KOffice KOffice Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones... KSpread Team |
2.2 / 2010-05-28 | LGPL GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License... |
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| Mariner Calc | Mariner Software Mariner Software Mariner Software is an American corporation with a focus on designing and publishing computer software products. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Mariner develops, sells, and supports professional and personal software for the productivity, writing and creative markets... |
1990 | 1992 | 5.5.1 | $49.95 | Proprietary | |
| Mesa | P&L Software | 1990 | 1991 | 3.1 / 2006-08 | $34 | Proprietary | |
| Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications... |
Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions... |
1982 | 1985 | 14.0.5128.5000 (32-bit) / January 2010 | $239 (Standalone price; also can be purchased in various Microsoft Office Microsoft Office Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of... bundles with varying prices) |
Proprietary | |
| Numbers Numbers (software) Numbers is a spreadsheet application developed by Apple Inc. as part of the iWork productivity suite alongside Keynote and Pages. Numbers 1.0 was announced on August 7, 2007 and thus it is the newest application in the iWork Suite. Numbers runs on Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" or newer... |
 |
Apple, Inc. | August 7, 2007 | 2.1 / July 20, 2011 | $79 (iWork '09 suite; also includes Pages Pages Pages is a word processor and page layout application developed by Apple. It is part of the iWork productivity suite and runs on the Mac OS X & iOS operating systems. The first version of Pages was announced on January 11, 2005, and was released one month later. The most recent Macintosh version,... and Keynote) $20 on Mac App Store |
Proprietary | |
| OpenOffice.org Calc OpenOffice.org Calc OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.org software package.Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving most spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format... |
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Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems... |
2000 | Build 638c / October 2001 | 3.3.0 / January 25, 2011 | LGPL GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License... v3 |
|
| PlanMaker PlanMaker PlanMaker is a spreadsheet program that is part of the SoftMaker Office office suite. Versions are available on Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE and Linux.... |
SoftMaker Software GmbH SoftMaker SoftMaker Software GmbH is a software company that produces office software and is located in Nuremberg, Germany. SoftMaker was founded in 1989 by Martin Kotulla. In 1991, it also added digital fonts to its offerings... |
1994 | 2010 | - SoftMaker Office 2008, or € 69.95 - SoftMaker Office 2010 |
Proprietary | ||
| Quantrix | Quantrix Quantrix Quantrix is a spreadsheet program based on the pioneering Lotus Improv, and introduced by Lighthouse Design for NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP in the early '90s when Lotus stopped selling Improv... |
? | Early 1990s | 4.0 / 1Q 2011 | $1,549, or more | Proprietary | |
| Quattro Pro Quattro Pro Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office.Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands similar to Lotus 1-2-3. It is commonly said to have been the first program to use tabbed sheets. Actually, Boeing Calc... |
Corel Corel Corel Corporation from the abbreviation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that specializes in graphics processing, similar to Adobe Systems... |
1988 | ? | X5 | ? | Proprietary | |
| Resolver One Resolver One Resolver One is a Spreadsheet program created by Resolver Systems with the IronPython programming language. It is a desktop application, with a web server version, and intended as a platform for the rapid development of business applications. It runs on Microsoft Windows, and is free for use in... |
Resolver Systems | 2005 | 2008-01-16 | 1.9 / 2010-06-04 | Free as part of an open source project or to create open source spreadsheet systems or $99 | open source / Proprietary | |
| Siag Siag Office Siag Office is a tightly integrated, free software office package for Unix-like operating systems. It consists of the spreadsheet SIAG , the word processor Pathetic Writer , the animation program Egon Animator, the text editor XedPlus, the file manager Xfiler and the previewer Gvu... |
Ulric Eriksson | 1996 | 3.6.1 / 2006 | GPL | |||
| SSuite Accel | Van Loo Software | 2002 | 2005 | 8.1 | |||
| Tables | Daniel Schwill | 2004 | First Public Beta / 2005-12 | 1.5.3 / 2009-05-01 | $42 | Proprietary |
Operating system support
The operating systemOperating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s the software can run on natively (without emulation
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
).
| Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal... |
Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems... |
Linux Linux Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds... |
BSD Berkeley Software Distribution Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995... |
Unix Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gnumeric Gnumeric Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released December 31, 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU GPL license; it is intended to replace proprietary and other spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft... |
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| IBM Lotus Symphony IBM Lotus Symphony IBM Lotus Symphony is a suite of applications for creating, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations and other documents, and is currently distributed as freeware. First released in 2007, the suite has a name similar to the 1980s DOS suite Lotus Symphony, but the two programs are... |
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| KSpread KSpread Tables is a free software spreadsheet application that is part of Calligra Suite, an integrated graphic art and office suite by KDE.Among Tables's features are multiple sheets per document, assorted formatting possibilities, support for more than 300 built-in functions, templates, chart,... |
beta | beta | |||
| Mariner Calc | |||||
| Mesa | |||||
| Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications... |
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| Numbers Numbers (software) Numbers is a spreadsheet application developed by Apple Inc. as part of the iWork productivity suite alongside Keynote and Pages. Numbers 1.0 was announced on August 7, 2007 and thus it is the newest application in the iWork Suite. Numbers runs on Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" or newer... |
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| OpenOffice.org Calc OpenOffice.org Calc OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.org software package.Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving most spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format... |
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| PlanMaker PlanMaker PlanMaker is a spreadsheet program that is part of the SoftMaker Office office suite. Versions are available on Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE and Linux.... |
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| SSuite Accel | |||||
| Quattro Pro Quattro Pro Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office.Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands similar to Lotus 1-2-3. It is commonly said to have been the first program to use tabbed sheets. Actually, Boeing Calc... |
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| Resolver One Resolver One Resolver One is a Spreadsheet program created by Resolver Systems with the IronPython programming language. It is a desktop application, with a web server version, and intended as a platform for the rapid development of business applications. It runs on Microsoft Windows, and is free for use in... |
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| Siag Siag Office Siag Office is a tightly integrated, free software office package for Unix-like operating systems. It consists of the spreadsheet SIAG , the word processor Pathetic Writer , the animation program Egon Animator, the text editor XedPlus, the file manager Xfiler and the previewer Gvu... |
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| Tables | |||||
| Windows Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal... |
Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems... |
Linux Linux Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds... |
BSD Berkeley Software Distribution Berkeley Software Distribution is a Unix operating system derivative developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1977 to 1995... |
Unix Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna... |
Import/export capabilities
This table gives a comparison of what file formatFile format
A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...
s each spreadsheet can import and export. "Yes" means can both import and export.
| OpenOffice.org XML OpenOffice.org XML OpenOffice.org XML is an open XML-based file format developed as an open community effort by Sun Microsystems and other OpenOffice.org project contributors in 2000-2002. The open-source software application suite OpenOffice.org 1.x and StarOffice 6 used the format as their native and default file... (sxc) |
CSV Comma-separated values A comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable .... |
Excel (xls) |
HTML HTML HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages.... |
LaTeX LaTeX LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to... |
ODF (ods) |
OOXML (xlsx) |
DIF Data Interchange Format Data Interchange Format is a text file format used to import/export single spreadsheets between spreadsheet programs . It is also known as "Navy DIF"... |
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| Gnumeric Gnumeric Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released December 31, 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU GPL license; it is intended to replace proprietary and other spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft... |
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| IBM Lotus Symphony IBM Lotus Symphony IBM Lotus Symphony is a suite of applications for creating, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations and other documents, and is currently distributed as freeware. First released in 2007, the suite has a name similar to the 1980s DOS suite Lotus Symphony, but the two programs are... |
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| KSpread KSpread Tables is a free software spreadsheet application that is part of Calligra Suite, an integrated graphic art and office suite by KDE.Among Tables's features are multiple sheets per document, assorted formatting possibilities, support for more than 300 built-in functions, templates, chart,... |
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| Mariner Calc | |||||||||
| Mesa | |||||||||
| Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications... |
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| Numbers Numbers (software) Numbers is a spreadsheet application developed by Apple Inc. as part of the iWork productivity suite alongside Keynote and Pages. Numbers 1.0 was announced on August 7, 2007 and thus it is the newest application in the iWork Suite. Numbers runs on Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" or newer... |
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| OpenOffice.org Calc OpenOffice.org Calc OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.org software package.Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving most spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format... |
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| Quattro Pro Quattro Pro Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Corel, most often as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office.Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands similar to Lotus 1-2-3. It is commonly said to have been the first program to use tabbed sheets. Actually, Boeing Calc... |
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| PlanMaker PlanMaker PlanMaker is a spreadsheet program that is part of the SoftMaker Office office suite. Versions are available on Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE and Linux.... |
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| Resolver One Resolver One Resolver One is a Spreadsheet program created by Resolver Systems with the IronPython programming language. It is a desktop application, with a web server version, and intended as a platform for the rapid development of business applications. It runs on Microsoft Windows, and is free for use in... |
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| Siag Siag Office Siag Office is a tightly integrated, free software office package for Unix-like operating systems. It consists of the spreadsheet SIAG , the word processor Pathetic Writer , the animation program Egon Animator, the text editor XedPlus, the file manager Xfiler and the previewer Gvu... |
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| Tables | |||||||||
| OpenOffice.org XML | CSV | XLS | HTML | LaTeX | ODF .ods | OOXML .xlsx | DIF |
Spreadsheet comparison tools
Looking for changes in spreadsheets or checking to see if two copies of a spreadsheet have identical content can be a mind-numbing exercise, especially for the larger and more complex spreadsheets. For Microsoft Excel, at least, the data file is amended each time the file is opened, even if there are no actual changes in the spreadsheet itself. For this reason; using file comparison will always show differences if the two files have different viewing (file opened) histories, even if the contents are identical. The following tools are helpful to find if there are any actual differences between different spreadsheet files.| Creator | Development started | First public release | Latest stable version | Cost (USD United States dollar The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies.... ) |
License | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet Compare | sourceforge.net SourceForge.net SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available... |
2004 | ? | 1.16 / 2010-11-10 | Free | GPL GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project.... |
| Compare Excel files | Spreadsheet Advantage | ? | ? | ? / ? | $299 (30-day trial) | Proprietary |
| Synkronizer | Synkronizer | 2000-07 | ? | 9.5 / 2008-02 | €29 to €149 | Proprietary |
| Spreadsheet Professional | Miricle Solutions | ? | ? | ? / ? | ? (30-day trial) | Proprietary |
See also
- List of spreadsheets
- List of online spreadsheets
- Comparison of word processorsComparison of word processors-General information:This table provides general information about selected word processors.-Characteristics:This table gives characteristics of each word processor.-Operating System Compatibility:...