• May 11, 2009

120% of Excel or Don’t Bother

When we launched eXpresso about a year and a half ago, we were very excited about the idea of paring our exciting Web 2.0 collaboration technology with Microsoft^® Excel. We knew that many businesses were dependant on Excel for day to day operations and that Excel files were meant to be shared. So we discovered a way to bring most of Excel’s features online and joined it with our unique collaboration technology. Slam dunk, right?

Well, almost. It turns out that our customers don’t want most of Excel’s features online. They need all of Excel’s features plus our document collaboration capabilities. While it may be true that most people use 80% or less of Excel’s resources, it turns out that everyone requires a different 80%. For some, conditional formatting and VBA are critical. Others wouldn’t know a macro if it bit them, but they can’t get by without a pivot table. When it comes to Excel, it’s all or nothing.

We heard you loud and clear. The next release of eXpresso will support Excel online. Not an “Excel-like” spreadsheet application. Not a simplified, “lightweight” version of Excel. Not a component of Excel. Excel … but with the added benefits of eXpresso’s collaboration. This sets eXpresso miles apart from other online spreadsheet applications.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, so let me show you what I mean. I’ve uploaded the same file into eXpresso’s upcoming Spring ’09 release and into other spreadsheet applications.

There is no comparison. Google Docs was least like the original Excel file, and Zoho was not much better. Symphony made a valiant effort, but the chart it included somehow displayed additional data and threw the whole thing off. Here are some other things that we noticed these spreadsheet apps lost:

• Conditional formatting
• Pivot tables
• Macros
• Charts
• Inserted images
• Styles and colors
• Linked data across sheets

So now that you can have Excel directly in your browser, why settle for anything else? On top of that, eXpresso gives you complete control over how you can share the same file differently with different people. Oh, and did I mention multiple people can be editing the same file at the same time?

Whether that’s 120%, 200%, or 105% of Excel’s features, that is for you to determine. The point is, now you can do more with your Excel files using eXpresso than you can do with Excel alone. We think that’s pretty cool.

Want to see it in person? Got a file you want to try? Just drop us a note, and we can set up a live demonstration. I’d love to hear about which Excel features you can’t live without.

• By Amber