So to celebrate the organisational powers of your phone, we’ve gathered four of the best spreadsheets apps for Android.
1. Google Sheets
Seeing as this one comes loaded on most Android phones and syncs up with Google Drive (which many Android users also use), it makes sense to start here. Google Sheets has its own rather stringent file format but has improved a great deal at converting spreadsheets from major formats like .xls and the open-source .ods format.
It’s great how quickly and easily Sheets syncs with your Google account, letting you easily continue working on a spreadsheet between your Android and PC. It has the usual features expected of spreadsheets including graphs, filters, pivot tables, conditional formatting and all the rest of it, as well as the ability to work offline. For a Google app, its layout perhaps isn’t as good as it could be, with the menus sometimes proving fiddly to navigate, but overall this is a great default option for most people.
2. Microsoft Excel
The PC powerhouse of spreadsheet apps went through a well-advised makeover on smartphones a few years ago and went from being something of an afterthought to one of the best options on Android.
Why is Microsoft Excel so good? It’s probably the slickest and best designed spreadsheet app out there, carrying over much of the functionality of the PC version into a touch-friendly interface that just feels right. All the important features like formulas, charts, Sparklines, data filtering are here, as well as good ideas nabbed from Google such as spreadsheet-sharing and collaboration. It’s a big app compared to others in this list, and its functionality is restricted to more recent Android versions, but these facts don’t distract from a high watermark of app design.
3. WPS Office
On the one hand it may seem like a downside of WPS Office that it’s the only app on this list that requires you to install the entire suite to use its spreadsheet function. On the other hand it still uses just 37MB of storage space in total, which is pretty impressive.
While not as feature-rich as Excel, WPS Office has vast compatibility with the biggest spreadsheet formats (including .xls and Google Sheets) and makes it quick and easy to do things like create charts, add images and art, and create automated formulae. It syncs up with Google Drive and Dropbox, which should cover you in terms of syncing your work across devices.
4. Zoho Sheet
One of the lesser-known spreadsheet apps is still perfectly capable of holding its own against the bigger names. Zoho Sheet feels largely inspired by the Google Sheets design, trying not to overload you with too many on-screen elements at once.
It has the usual array of vibrant charts and standard formulae and is compatible with Microsoft’s popular .xls format, which means you shouldn’t have trouble opening most spreadsheets that other people send your way. It has excellent sharing and collaboration options, too, with the ability to call people from within the app using a dedicated VOIP platform. In terms of unique features, our favorites are probably the home-screen widget which lets you jump straight into your most recent or favourited spreadsheets and the split-screen function which lets you view two spreadsheets at once.
Conclusion
That should give you plenty of options for Android-based spreadsheet apps to chew on. Remember that a lot of these have different designs for the smartphone and tablet versions, so you may find slight variations depending on which one you go for.
