Know any good mini-spreadsheets for XP?

August 7, 2009 9:03 PM

Can you recommend a mini-spreadsheet program for Windows XP, preferably freeware? It will be running on a tiny laptop in a place with no internet access, so OpenOffice is too big and online solutions are too... online.

I'm imagining a sort of super-stripped-down Excel: No macros or fanciness, just the ability to enter numbers and strings in a table, add them up, and export to a real-Excel-readable format for later collation on a desktop PC.

I'm hoping for recommendations of specific software and places to get it from, rather than "Here's the 'spreadsheet' section of VersionTracker, there are hundreds" — I'm an OS X guy, I have no intuitive feel for choosing and obtaining Windows software. Thanks in advance.

posted by No-sword to computers & internet (19 comments total)

Open Office only uses 293M on my HD. If only the spreadsheet were installed, it would be even smaller. Are you sure it won't fit?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:05 PM on August 7

Gnumeric is a Linux spreadsheet program that also runs on Windows. It should fit the bill.
posted by nasreddin at 9:09 PM on August 7 [1 favorite]

It does just barely squeeze on the HDD, but it runs very poorly. This is not a fancy laptop, trust me. It is probably inferior to most of the cellphones that will be sold today around the world. So since all we need to do is type in numbers, we figure there must be a smaller, nimbler solution. I want the Notepad of spreadsheets, not the Word (or even the WordPad).
posted by No-sword at 9:11 PM on August 7

If you're that cramped for space, have you considered looking for a DOS spreadsheet application? I'm thinking something like an old version of Lotus 1-2-3...

On a quick search, you can actually get the original VisiCalc!
posted by arrjay at 9:20 PM on August 7

Crazy idea: text editor and coreutils for win32. Just use a file format of comma delimited lines, and cut to handle grabbing a specific column.

This is literally the notepad of spreadsheets. I'm not sure where to find a good tool to do actual calculations via stdin however.
posted by pwnguin at 9:31 PM on August 7

How about buying a copy of Office 95 from ebay?
posted by Rhomboid at 9:34 PM on August 7

Seconding gnumeric. Much less weighty than OOo Calc.
posted by flabdablet at 9:36 PM on August 7

Gnumeric is likely your best bet. Wikipedia says your options are limited.

The only other thing a quick search pulls up for me is this random thing, which, as a Win3.1 program, is going to be incredibly lightweight. It does calculations and exports to an old Excel format. Should work. Throw the archive at a virus scanner before using it, please. I don't want you blaming me if some ancient virus takes over your computer and tries to delete all your .wav files.
posted by whatnotever at 9:44 PM on August 7

Have you considered Offline Access for Google Docs?
posted by @troy at 10:18 PM on August 7

What about "Simple Spreadsheet"?

Or, "PySpread"?

(Got these links from SourceForge)
posted by jkaczor at 10:21 PM on August 7

Or... Spread32

Or... CleanSheets (Requires Java)
posted by jkaczor at 10:26 PM on August 7

Do you truly need a spreadsheet, or instead could you make do with a software-based scrolling calculator?
posted by jkaczor at 10:27 PM on August 7

num-utils, a set of tools to do calculations via stdin.

So basically, comma separated files, cut to select fields to operate on and num-utils to do the processing. If you need to do equations from equations though, it gets much, much uglier. I need to get off my butt and write a node editing GUI tool for unix pipes.

Pyspread seems pretty new; it requires a newer version of wxGTK than I have in the latest stable Ubuntu.
posted by pwnguin at 10:36 PM on August 7

+1 for Spread32.

It takes up 110kb of HDD space, and uses 3,160k of RAM. It does the job pretty well, too.
posted by Solomon at 2:11 AM on August 8 [1 favorite]

I have not tried Gnumeric, but one other good answer to the question (without having to deal with a command line, etc.) is GS-Calc.
posted by yclipse at 2:26 AM on August 8

MS Works is a lightweight version of MS Office - it has a spreadsheet too, called "MS Works Spreadsheet". Maybe that'll do you?
posted by Salvor Hardin at 4:18 AM on August 8

I used to use GS-Calc on some woefully underpowered laptops years ago. Works great. And cheap.
posted by jdfan at 8:47 AM on August 8

If the issue with OpenOffice is one of installation or hard drive space, you can run Open Office off of a thumb drive courtesy of Portable Apps
posted by exparrot at 7:47 AM on August 10

Thanks, y'all. Field has been narrowed to Gnumeric and Spread32, and the actual people doing the data entry will decide the winner. (We decided that any risk to our .wavs was unacceptable.) Sorry for delayed best answering.
posted by No-sword at 3:23 PM on August 10