Top 10 alternatives to Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel has almost monopolized every Windows PC to carry Microsoft Office Suite with it. There’s no doubt that Excel is good, but you can’t argue its an all powerful spreadsheet. Clearly, it’s not the only spreadsheet you might consider to use. When it comes to Excel, the affordability is always an issue. When you are running on a budget the less costlier alternatives are always welcome. There are a number of free open-source and web based spreadsheets that can serve as an alternative for Excel. I sorted out the top 10 alternatives for  Microsoft Excel.

1. OpenOffice Spreadsheets

OpenOfffice’s spreadsheet application or OpenOffice Calc is one of the widely used alternatives for Microsoft Excel. Most of its features compliment the Excel. It has an user-friendly interface. This application offers several functionality that include access to raw data from various corporate databases, data cross-tabulation, create formulas using natural language formats, insert a sum function,  apply flexible cell formatting options and summary and conversion.

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2. Gnumeric

This is also known as Gnome Office Spreadsheet. It has a number of remarkable features that are not common to free software. It incorporates almost all the worksheet functions of MS Excel. Apart from that it also includes another 154 functions that are lacking in MS Excel, such as support for intersheet dependencies, 3D dependencies, financial derivatives and telecommunication engineering, implicit intersection, implicit iteration etc.

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3. Abykus 2.0

This application finds its use both in business and scientific applications. It’s an object-oriented spreadsheet with an intuitive interface. The program includes various features to support vaious types of calculations. The calculations include trig, matrix, financial, date, time, string, coordinate geometry, built-in math and 3D graphic display functions.

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4. CleanSheets

This is a unique platform independent spreadsheet application. It offers a formula language that is close to Microsoft Excel. Further as the spreadsheets are extensible the end user programmers can develop workable spreadsheets from it. To use the application you need to install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

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5.  Numbers

This is a spreadsheet app enclosed in Apple’s iWork suite . It’s not designed to imitate the features of Excel. Provided with variety of templates it is easy to use and can be used to set various common kinds of spreadsheets.

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6. Google Docs -Spreadsheet

This is a web-based alternative for Microsoft Excel. The Google Docs Spreadsheet can be accessed anytime and anywhere. Although it offers limited functionalities, but it can be used for all simple spreadsheet based  jobs. With this application the user can create, edit, and format worksheets as well as work with formulas, forms, gadgets, and charts. Above all you can share the spreadsheets with other people working online.

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7. Spread32

This is a small sized spreadsheet program that offers 256 columns x 65536 rows x 255 sheets. Some of its key features include multiple key sorting, freeze panes, and other many features. This  application doesn’t fit with large calculation, but its enough to accomplish many a small tasks.

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8.  Thinkfree cal

This Excel alternative works in conjunction with the company’s web site. It is Java based and therefore compatible with most of the operating system - Windows, Mac OS, and Unix-like systems.

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9. Zoho Sheets

Zoho Sheets are web based alternatives for Microsoft Excel. It also allow multiple users to work on a spreadsheet simultaneously.

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10. KSpread

Essentially, this is a spreadsheet component are designed for the free KOffice suite that run on Unix-like operating systems. This application lacks most of features of commercial spreadsheet program like Excel, but encloses majority of the funcionalities in modern spreadsheet. The KSpread spreadsheet complex formulas, multiple sheets, formatting, graphs, scripting, conditional coloring, hyperlinks, etc.

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