Torkil Johnsen

Google just released chart support for Spreadsheets. A long-awaited and almost inevitable enhancement to the already excellent features of this online Excel competitor. The interface has been adjusted and a new chart button has been added on the Edit menu.

Charts of different types can be created. So far there is support for columns, bars, lines, pie and scatterm all with 2-5 different subtypes. (see screenshot below). Selecting data for the chart is easy: Just click and drag over a dataset before you click the chart button. When creating a chart you also get a nifty live preview of the chart that you can look at before approving the end result.

The finished chart is placed in a layer above the actual spreadsheet and can be dragged around, resized and edited with ease. It mimics the functionality of MS Excel, but with alot less functionality and alot more simplicity. You’ll probably like the simplicity, but after a while you’ll get frustrated over the functionality it lacks compared to what you are used to from Excel.

Here are some screenshots:

Adding/editing the chart:

The finished chart:

So what do you think about this new feature? Personally I feel it lacking in some areas, but I guess that is the tradeoff when using an online app like this. Same goes for docs and regular spreadsheet use really…

More news can be read here: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html

Technorati Tags: Google, spreadsheets, excel, microsoft, google docs, charts