Google Docs is a free set of online tools from Google that allows you to work with spreadsheets online as well as documents, presentations and forms. This tutorial provides a step by step way that you can upload a Spreadsheet created in Excel to work with it online in Google Docs and perhaps even share the spreadsheet with friends so you can collaborate together on the data within.
How to Upload a Spreadsheet to Google Docs
Visit the Google docs site and log in with your Google username and password. If you do not have a username and password for Google then click on the Get Started button towards the bottom of the login box and follow the on-screen instructions. Registration is a fairly straight forward process requiring you to enter your email address, or create a GMail account and then give it a password and some basic information.
Now that you have logged in to Google Docs you will see the sidebar which contains options to sort through your documents such as which documents are shared with others, owned by me, hidden, starred etc…
To upload a spreadsheet to Google Docs you first need to make sure you have a spreadsheet built to upload. If so click on the Upload button found near the top of the page as follows…
When you click on Upload you are presented with a page that gives a simple upload area. At this point you click Select Files to Upload where you will then be presented with a file manager where you can find the spreadsheet on your PC to upload. Select the spreadsheet and click on Open and then on Start Upload.
Once the upload completes (which could take a while depending on how large the spreadsheet file is) you can click on the << Back to Google Docs link at the top left of the page.
Back on the main menu you will now see the spreadsheet you loaded right at the top of the list in the middle of the page where you can now open the spreadsheet and edit online.
A few things to note here are that Excel is far more powerful than Google Docs Spreadsheet software and thus, if you upload a fancy spreadsheet that’s designed with colours and a specific layout then you might loose a lot of the artistic look. The good thing is that a lot of the functionality should remain.
