Hi
My team need to share the editing of a spreadsheet. Can you recommend any free, (already hosted) online tools?
- We dont like Google docs because we have ideological objections to Google
- DropBox seems trixy to use (setup difficulties)
With thanks
J
Hello! How about Box (box [dot] com). Maybe you should try this one. I’m also new at box and so far my usage runs smoothly. I used to share essay documents with my colleagues. All of my essays were from <snip>
I would [highly] recommend Google Docs (now called Google Drive).
If you have a Google (or Gmail) account then you have access to Google Drive for free. The feature set continuously grows, too.
No.
Although Google Docs works well, like I said above our teams has SEVERE ideological objections to using Google. They knowledge about all of us is utterly, utterly, UTTERLY out of control we refuse to use them.
J
New problem - some of my team of volunteers do not have Microsoft Excel and (worse) they are not allowed to install anything on their computers.
So I think we need an online actual spreadsheet, not just file sharing.
i.e. We need something like a Google Docs spreadsheet but not one that is run by Google.
e.g. Anyone know of any good free collaboration tools?
Try Zoho Docs (http://www.zoho.com/docs/online-spreadsheet.html) or EditGrid (http://www.editgrid.com/) and see if any of those suites your needs
edit: Forget EditGrid. It seems that they’re closing
If you have idealogical issues with google, chances are the basis of those issues would apply to any other cloud document vendor supplying a free service.
“seems”? What set-up diffuculties did you have? I’m sure someone here will be able to help get you through it.
It seems that, for starters, not everyone has Excel installed in their computers. From Dropbox you can download a file but you can’t work in the same document at the same time… they will have different versions of the same document… Maybe they should be GITting it 
Incorrect. We simply do not want to too much information being held in any one place.
Yes we object to the truly massive corporations (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google) holding so much information about us.
And the worst offender by far is Google.
In order to optimize their adverts
- They have a near monopoly on web search and they store every one of our searches.
- They read our emails.
From the above they know who our friends are. And know who their friends are. They know what we are interested in. They know what our friends are interested in. They know what diseases we have, what hobbies we have, they know our passing interests and ideas. They know far more about us than our own parents do. Or our spouces. They know far more about us than we know about ourselves.
- They try track our geographic position night and day to within a few feet.
But that’s still not enough. No, Google also needs to spy on us as we go from site to site. In order to do this Google has bankrupted almost the entire analytics industry. As a result they now know not only which websites we visit they know how long we paused on which page. They know what we searched for and can probably work out what we bought.
And nothing is ever deleted. It’s stored forever.
WORST STILL every now and then their data get hacked. They were even caught copying archives over the net unencrypted.
WORSE STILL there are many ‘back doors’ for the state to get access to all of this data.
WORSE STILL we have no idea what opinions Google is forming about us with it statistical engines.
Are we: probably black; probably white; probably gay; probably a billionaire; probably a worthless pauper; probably a criminal; probably liberal; probably conservative; probably a wife beater; probably a Christian; probably a Muslim; probably a dangerous free thinking radical; probably a communist; probably a fascist; probably a terrorist; probably going to drive too fast; probably Jewish; probably a racist WASP; probably going publicly slag off Google?
We don’t know what assumptions Google is making about us and we are unable to correct them even if we could guess.
There are many benefits from the cloud, however I just do I want to hand my entire soul over to Google on a plate?
No thanks.
When a friend tried to share photos with us on DropBox we could only download things ONCE. And worse we were unable to upload anything. I tried to investigate for him but it was too complicated to work out.
In any case we (probably) cant get DB installed on all my team of volunteer’s computers as some offices wont allow it.
So far Zoho looks BRILLIANT. Many thanks :^)
Is there any know catch? (Other than the fact the state can probably read every word if they want to…! ;^) )
EDIT: There is a catch. Free version of Zoho only allows 3 collaborators. We need at least 10. :^[
Can’t tell. I heard good things about them but I never used them. When I had to share my spreadsheet I used Google Drive so… 
[FONT=Georgia]Strangely enough, I actually trust Microsoft and Amazon more than the rest you mentioned. At least they’re both very forthright about making money, so we know what they’re about. Apple too, although they pretend they’re too cool to care. I hope they don’t lose their direction now that Jobs is gone.
Facebook seems overly nosey and they don’t even know why, so that’s very worrying. I feel like it’s a make-it-up-as-we-go-along situation with Facebook and that’s too pragmatic for my taste given the amount of access they have to persons’ private information. There doesn’t seem to be a solid, moral backbone that they’d adhere to. For example, it wouldn’t surprise me if five or ten years from now, just because they need the cash, they’ll sell out their members’ data to advertisers.
But Google? I’m very disappointed. Google recently seemed to have gotten way more aggressive all at once. Am I the only one who’s noticed this? They seemed to be pretty innocuous and quite friendly and helpful for years, but then about two or three years ago, they’d suddenly started pushing themselves into my face constantly; Buying up every popular website, bundling themselves in popular software, they’re tied to my phone, now there’s laptops and glasses. argh! I’m sick of seeing them! I’m scared they’ll become the Internet version of Nestlé![/FONT]
[ot]
Nope, you’re not the only one who’s noticed this.[/ot]
Don’t use their search or their email then. You should really ban all visitors to your sites referred by google if you feel that strongly 
Easy enough not to use gmail.
But realistically how is anyone involved in on-line marketing supposed to NOT use Google Adwords given the Google has (I’m guessing) what 75% of all Search traffic ?
But realistically how are individual websites supposed to stop using their rather good and free Google Analytics? We tried using rather powerful analytics software called Foviance but Google bankrupted them. We also spent GBP5000 on some analytics software called Urchin but google took it over and then bit by bit failed to maintain it!
Google are completely out of control and in effect Evil. The only mystery to me is why nobody else seems to care.
I mean everyone in the UK got incredibly angry about journalists hacking into people’s voicemail. I mean yes, it’s clearly wrong. But listening to the stupid messages left for you by your friends barely registers compared to Google storing all your searches, spying in detail as you surf from site to site, and in effect hacking your entire soul !
It’s a HECK of a shame about Zoho documents.
Like I say, the interface looks brilliant so far, but they only allow 3 collaborators in the free version, whereas we need about 10. The next step up is a full $60 per year. They need to learn from the world of mobile phone Apps if the want serious scale. The cost should be $5 ONE OFF ! $60/year is a big price to pay just to hate Google. They just dont get it do they? Only after we’ve spent many hours learning (and loving) their system should the expect us to pay more. And only then if we use more than say 1GB of data. Thereafter once trust and learning has been established of course we would pay more. The idiots.
OK I’d better keep looking. Any other suggestions?
I notice somebody on another forum suggested TeamLab and Zimbra to you. Did you look at them? If so, what were the difficulties there?
This site seems to have lost my last post. So here goes again.
TeamLab is WAY too expensive $250/year for up to 10 of us.
Zimbra require hosting
To recap: My project is a collection of up to 10 volunteers. It needs to be either free or a VERY small one-off cost. i.e. Mobile phone app level amounts (e.g. say $5 one-off), and then only once we have used and come to love the thing. It also needs to be hosted with nothing to install. Google Docs spreadsheet would be perfect except that it is the Evil Google. (And no, we dont like Amazon, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft either due to the unethical volumes of data that they are assiduously harvesting about all of us.)
Zoho spreadsheet looked good too but the free version only allows 3 collaborators which is a deal-breaker.
Sadly several of the other hosted on-line spreadsheets seem to be being bankrupted by Google Docs… (but we fully intend to go down fighting !)
- Any other suggestions ?