Excel

Microsoft has made the preview version of its Android productivity suite available on Google Play for the first time. Previously the three applications were available to users who signed up for the preview through a Google+ group.

The new apps are packaged separately, and more fully-featured than the existing all-in-one Office Mobile software that’s been available for some time. Of course, this is still an unfinished product, so bear in mind that some issues are bound to arise.

Users can now download the…

Hot on the heels of updating the Docs app for Android, Google has just started rolling out an update to Sheets on Android, as well. The update is packed full of changes, both feature-wise and in terms of design. The update comes just days after Google announced it was shutting down Quickoffice on iOS and Android and introduces several features formerly available in the mobile editing app.

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Google has rolled out an update to the developer channel build of Chrome OS that adds the experimental ability to edit Microsoft Word and Excel files. First noticed by Google Chromium evangelist François Beaufort, the feature is in the Chromium code review and simply reads “Improved Quickoffice editing about:flag.”

In order to use this feature, your Chrome OS device must be on the developer channel. If it is, then type “chrome://flags” into the address bar, find the “Enable document editing” entry, and click enable. Your machine will then be restarted and when it turns back on, you’ll have the ability to edit Word and Excel documents. 
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While you might usually ignore the 99 cent Android apps being discounted on Amazon, you’ll probably want to grab today’s deal with productivity suite OfficeSuite Professional 5 discounted from $15 to $0. If you’re unfamiliar with the app, expect the ability to create, view, edit, and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. (as well as view PDFs) with a slick file browser, Google Docs integration, and a two-pane UI optimized for Honeycomb tablet users. The app’s page on the Market also claims it’s the only “mobile office for Android that allows opening of password protected” files. We haven’t had time to put OfficeSuite 5 to the test, but many OEMs including Sony Ericsson selected it to come preinstalled on over 20 million devices, so they must be doing something right. There’s a video of the app in action courtesy of AndroidAuthority after the break.

If you haven’t checked out the latest version, here’s what’s new in OfficeSuite 5:

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One thing that keeps people on Excel is the ability to use Pivot tables.  Google today eliminated one more barrier to migrating to apps by implementing pivot tables today in Google Spreadsheets.

In essence, a pivot table does just that — it allows you to “pivot” or rotate data, thus looking at it from different angles and seeing a variety of patterns which may not be immediately obvious. Let’s take a very simple example of a list of students. This list includes a number of students and some information about them, including gender, class level, and major.

Updates to Spreadsheets are rolling out now.
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