Excel 2010 and the Excel Web App

Windows Live users can save files to a SkyDrive folder - an online depository (now renamed as OneDrive). This allows you to access your files from other PCs and to share them with colleagues. There is also a set of online applications which allow you to work with Office files on any PC.

The online Excel application has less functionality than the full, installed program, but will nevertheless be able to faithfully display a spreadsheet originally created using Excel 2010.

In addition to logging into your SkyDrive and using saved files, it is possible to embed spreadsheets within your own web pages and blogs and make them widely available. It only takes a single line of HTML code to incorporate part of an Excel file within your own website. You can set various parameters which determine whether users can edit values in cells or open the whole spreadsheet file.

Any changes made or data entered into these embedded files cannot be saved. Therefore they are only useful for the display of information and calculations.

One particular limitation with the embedded files is that they cannot incorporate Excel's data validation functions. The validation tools allow you to include drop down lists which would be ideally suited to files which are shared with a wide range of users.

Place an Excel 2010 file in a folder called 'Public' in your SkyDrive: [File] Save and Send | Save to Web | Public | Save. It can only be an 'xlsx' file type - no macros are allowed.

Shut Excel and log into your on-line SkyDrive. Open the file in your Public folder and select the Share and Embed options.

Examples (where editing is allowed)

The two examples shown above both allow the user to type values. It is intended that they only enter values in the cells formatted with yellow colouring, however neither cell protection nor data validation can be used in these web apps. Changing the cells values will affect the chart on the example to the left and a calculation in the example to the right.

Nothing can be saved and if the page is re-opened or refreshed the original spreadsheet data will appear.