Pros & Cons
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- Fast.
- Highly Excel-compatible.
- Can easily publish individual cells.
- Simple to collaborate in real-time with chat.
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- Doesn't support all Excel functions.
EditGrid Specs
| Free: | Yes |
| OS Compatibility: | Linux |
| OS Compatibility: | Mac OS |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows Vista |
| OS Compatibility: | Windows XP |
| Tech Support: | Email for corporate clients |
| Type: | Business |
| Type: | Enterprise |
| Type: | Personal |
| Type: | Professional |
Attempting to become the online replacement for Microsoft Excel is a tall order, but despite some rough patches, EditGrid comes impressively close. Unlike
The product has many of the same collaboration tools as other Web-based spreadsheets such as Google Docs and Zoho.com, but I was consistently impressed by the depth of its compatibility with the advanced functions in Excel, and with the menu structure's similarity to that of Excel 2003. As with other online rivals such as Zoho and Google Docs, EditGrid makes collaboration easy by allowing users to publish spreadsheets that can be visible either to everyone on the Web or only to colleagues who have been supplied with a password. And, like the same leading online competitors, the service preserves all revisions and changes. It also supports real-time collaboration, so that multiple users with permission can work on a sheet at the same time. EditGrid even let me publish a single cell or range by assigning a Web address, which I could then insert into other Web pages, a feature that Zoho provides but Google doesn't—at least not yet.—
EditGrid in Action
But whereas all of these services share many similar features, I was impressed to find that EditGrid could perform feats that many of its rivals couldn't. For example, it not only let me create spreadsheet templates—a capability not offered by Google and Zoho—but it also seemed notably faster and showed deeper compatibility with Excel's vast catalog of functions. Despite this, it's still lagging in display abilities, such as the conditional formatting that Google provides (albeit in a relatively primitive form).
One of my toughest spreadsheet tests is importing PC Magazine's spreadsheet-killer workbook, an extravagantly complex Excel file devised by former staffer Ben Gottesman. Although EditGrid couldn't handle some of the complex nested functions and couldn't display some of the calculated data that should have appeared in the embedded charts, it correctly handled everything else. In fact, it formatted charts more legibly than Excel! Unless you're an economist, a scientist, or a fitness-minded PC Magazine editor, you probably don't have to worry about the problems I encountered, and EditGrid definitely deserves high marks on this test.
I especially liked the clean, highly elegant interface, with its bright and neat layout and mostly clear menu structure. I was sometimes puzzled by a lack of useful feedback—for example, when I was viewing a worksheet that I had marked as read-only and tried to use Number Format from the menu, EditGrid didn't tell me that I couldn't edit a read-only worksheet. The app simply displayed an empty gray version of its normal Number Format dialog box instead of the full-featured dialog it shows for editable worksheets.
As with similar online applications, upon log-in EditGrid displays a list of spreadsheets I've created or uploaded. I was able to import workbooks in most standard formats from Lotus 1-2-3 through Excel 2003 and
EditGrid's slightly mixed bag of downloadable add-ons and utilities includes an effective Excel plug-in that let me incorporate EditGrid's real-time data into my Excel worksheets. I also tried a Windows-only tool that automatically synchronizes EditGrid workbooks stored on my desktop with their online copies, and it worked smoothly and quickly. Another EditGrid tool is a Web-based translator designed to make workbooks readable in other languages, but which provided results that were more puzzling than illuminating. In other instances, I got better results from a Web-based calendar generator that creates data you can subscribe to with Apple's iCal and Google Calendar and from another EditGrid Web tool that finds locations on your worksheet and charts them on Google Maps.
Oddest of all was a Web app that performs the same search on Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. It puts the first 42 results into a single workbook and compares the rankings of each item so that, for example, you can see where your own Web site shows up on three search engines. This worked well enough when I entered a search string without quotation marks, but when I used quotation marks so that I could search for a phrase, the Google results that EditGrid produced were completely different from those I got when performing the same search on Google's own home page.
For uncomplicated online worksheets, I'd have a hard time choosing between Google Docs and EditGrid. But if I needed to do anything more advanced, I'd take EditGrid instantly. Our Editors' Choice for online spreadsheet apps, EditGrid is not only more powerful than Google Docs, it also shares honors with Apple's Numbers (part of
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Final Thoughts
EditGrid
Not perfect—but all in all, the best of the online spreadsheet services.