The new additions that have been added today include:

A better document editor

What Google says:

We’ve brought the responsive, real-time editing experience you’ve come to expect from our spreadsheets over to documents, which means you can now see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. We also added another popular feature from spreadsheets: sidebar chat, so you can discuss documents as you work on them with colleagues.

The new technical foundation also helped us improve document formatting, which means better import/export fidelity, a revamped comment system, real margins and tab stops, and improved image layout within documents. These improvements have been highly requested, but previously impossible to create with the older documents editor on older browsers.

We were not able to test this feature yet as it has not been activated for our account. Google noted that the feature will be available to all users in the coming days. It is likely that a New Version link will appear on top to switch to the new editor, exactly as the new editor is accessed when viewing a spreadsheet in Google Docs.

A faster spreadsheet editor

What Google says:

With the new spreadsheets editor, you’ll see significant speed and performance improvements — spreadsheets load faster, are more responsive and scroll more seamlessly. We’ve also added a host of often requested features, like a formula bar for cell editing, auto-complete, drag and drop columns, and simpler navigation between sheets. And as always, real-time collaboration in spreadsheets is easy with sidebar chat and the ability to see which cell each person is editing.

The new spreadsheet editor is not enabled by default. Google Docs users should see a New Version link after opening a spreadsheet in Google Docs.

Clicking the New Version link will open a notification with a button to try the new version. Pressing the button loads the new spreadsheet editor, and Google Docs will automatically load all spreadsheets in the new spreadsheet editor instead of the old one. There is an Old Version link in the top header navigation, allowing users to switch between the new and old versions of the editor as needed.

Performance has been increased by Google including initial spreadsheet loading time, scrolling and edits from collaborators. The new additions to the editor all make sense. Prominent new features include the Formula Bar, a long requested feature, as well as autofill and column dragging and sorting

A new collaborative drawing editor

What Google says:

In the year since we launched the Insert drawing tool, we’ve received many requests for the ability to collaborate on drawings and make them accessible directly from the docs list. The new standalone drawings editor lets you collaborate in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics. Copy these drawings into documents, spreadsheets and presentations using the web clipboard, or share and publish drawings just like other Google Docs.

Drawings look a lot like presentations, with the main difference seeming to be that drawings are limited to a single page. Drawings can also be added to spreadsheets, presentations and documents.The drawings can be created in collaboration and are then accessible directly from the list of available documents and files.

Take a look at the video that has been created by the Google Docs team that showcases the new features.

Currently only the drawings and spreadsheet editor have been enabled for Google Docs users. The new documents editor will be enabled in the coming days. Google Gears users should note that these new editors are currently not compatible with the technology that powers the offline access, however Google promised to add support for these new editors in future versions.

Google has concentrated their development efforts on performance and collaboration in this new Google Docs release. The lack of offline editing capabilities could prove to be problematic, but it should still be possible to use the old editors for that.

All ways of opening Microsoft Excel spreadsheets can be divided into an online and offline category. The online category usually requires an account at some website before the spreadsheets can be worked with.

Computer Software Programs:

Excel Viewer [link]

Microsoft’s own Excel Viewer can be used to view Excel 2007 (xlsx) and earlier Excel spreadsheets. It has a download size of 74 Megabytes and uses the same core that Microsoft Excel uses which ensures a good compatibility with all Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Open Office [link]

Open Office is considered to be the Microsoft Office alternative. It is a free Open Source office suite that can be used to open Microsoft Office document formats. The module needed to open Excel spreadsheets is called Calc and supports the new Excel 2007 xlsx format but also older Microsoft Excel documents.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack [link]

Users who have a previous version of Microsoft Office or Microsoft Excel installed (that is pre-Excel 2007) can use the Microsoft Office compatibility pack to add support for the Excel xlsx format so that these spreadsheets can also be worked with in previous versions of Excel.

XLS Viewer 2.30 [link]

The XLS Viewer has a tiny size of just 1 Megabyte. It can open, display and print xls, xlsx and ods documents that have been created with Microsoft Office or Open Office. The computer program seems to have slight problems displaying complex spreadsheets correctly.

Online Tools

Google Docs [link]

Google Docs has only recently added support for the Excel 2007 xlsx format. The online service was able to work with standard xls documents before but the new feature makes it possible to open and work with all Excel documents in Google Docs.

Thinkfree [link]

Can be used to quickly view spreadsheets online.Supports both old and new Excel spreadsheets and various other formats.

Zoho Sheets [link]

Zoho Sheets is an online product that enables users to view and edit spreadsheets online.

Do you know of other online or offline tools that can be used to view spreadsheets? Let us know in the comments.

Users with a Google account, for example one from a Gmail account, can access Google Fusion Tables right away. Each user gets 250 Megabytes of storage space on the Google servers and the ability to upload data that cannot exceed 100 Megabytes per data set. Currently only Microsoft Excel (xls) and comma separated value (csv) files are supported by the Google data management product. Uploaded data can then be shared with collaborators with the additional option to share only part of the data with different collaborators.

The data can be visualized by the user in various ways including the default table form, pie charts, bars or intensity maps among other forms of visualization.

It is furthermore possible to edit the data at hand or to merge it with another set of data. Merging tables could not be easier. All that needs to be done is to select the two spreadsheets that should be merged and which columns to use for matching data across the two tables.

Google Fusion Tables is an easy to use data management service that comes with an interesting set of features that the developers plan to expand in the future based on user feedback.

Let’s say you have two columns of numbers and you want to add a third column based on the other two data. That third columns’ entry will depend upon the information in the first two. IF entry A is greater than B THEN C is X ELSE C is Y.

But how does one do this? It’s actually quite easy. Let’s start out with a more simple example and move on to a more complex example.

The first example will illustrate a basic IF/ELSE statement that uses only two columns of data. We’ll do a simple spreadsheet that deals with how many persons each employee will bring to a company picnic. To make things easy if the person enters “0″ that means they are not bringing a guest (the employee, however,  IS required to come) and if they enter “1″ that means they are which means that employee equals two attendees. The first column will represent the name of the employee and the second column is how many guests the employee will bring. The formula to enter into the third column would look like:

=IF(B1=1;2;1)

What this will do is enter a “2″ in the third cell is the employee is bringing a guest and a 1 if they are not.

Now let’s make this a bit more complex. For this example we’ll have three columns. The first column is a number that represents how many hours an employee worked. The second column will represent how many hours over 40 they worked. The third column will represent how much overtime pay they made. But let’s say you also have to account for zero hours worked. The formula for the second column would look like this:

=IF(A9<=40;0; IF(A9>40;(A9-40)))

For the third column let’s continue with this idea. Say if an employee worked over 5 hours of overtime they would gain an extra 100 dollar bonus in their check. So we’ll add a fourth column for bonuses. For simplicity’s sake all employees make $10.00 an hour. Overtime is standard time and a half pay. So the forumla for the third column would be a standard:

=SUM((40*10)+(B9*15))

And the formula for the fourth column would be:

=IF(B9>=5;100;0)

Now for the final total for employee salary a fifth column would be added that would look like:

=SUM(C9+D9)

Final Thoughts

The examples may be very simple but the idea can be applied to many instances. Using IF/ElSE statements in OpenOffice Calc can quickly take your spreadsheets to a much higher level of usability.

The Excel add-in provides automatic backups of Excel spreadsheets. The interval of each automatic backup, the destination folder, the days the backups will be kept and the maximum number of backups can be defined when the add-in is loaded and activated in Microsoft Excel.

The Excel Autobackup add-in has to be activated before it can be used. To do that a user would have to click on the Office ribbon and select Excel Options at the bottom of the menu. There he would click on the Add-ins menu entry on the left side and the button Go at the bottom the the add-ins menu once it is displayed.

This opens a list of available add-ins and a browse button among others on the right side. The user would then click on Browse and select the autobackup.xla file on the computer’s hard drive. This loads and activates the plugin. After clicking OK in the menu the previously described settings can be changed and the add-in will start to automatically backup Excel spreadsheets right away.

The backup will be named after the original filename with an additional number to differentiate the backups.

The most common file names are .odf for word processing documents and .ods for spreadsheets. If you encounter such a file and want to open it in the Microsoft Office Suite you will notice that it is not possible. Instead of downloading another Office suite you could instead install the ODF addins for the Microsoft Office Suite which add support for the office software programs Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Powerpoint. This means support for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, and the file formats .odt (documents), .ods (spreadsheets) and .odp (presentations).

After installing the Open XML / ODF Translator addins in the Microsoft Office Suite users can not only open but also save Open Document Formats. Supported are the Microsoft Office Suites Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP.

Update: The Open XML / ODF Translator Add-ins for Office have been updated recently. The biggest change is support for Microsoft Office 2010 which previously was not supported by the add-ins. It basically means that Office 2010 users can download and install the add-ins for their program to open ODF file types with it.

Other changes include a series of fixes and improvements for specific features and their transition. Installation should be straightforward. Just download the ODF add-in from the Sourceforge website and execute it on the computer that you want to use it on.

If installation is successful, you should be able to open an “.ODF” file from Microsoft Office (see menu”File>ODF…->Open ODF”). Also, when right-clicking on a “.ODF” file in explorer, you should have the option to open the document in Microsoft Office (menu “Open with Microsoft Office”).

The program adds capabilities both to the file menus in Microsoft Office and to Windows Explorer’s Open dialog.