Nextcloud Spreadsheet: the open source Excel and Google Sheets alternative

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Budgets, inventory lists, sales figures, payroll exports: some of a company’s most sensitive data lives in spreadsheets. With proprietary cloud-based tools like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, that data sits on servers you have no control over. Under laws like the CLOUD Act, US authorities can demand access to it, regardless of where in the world it’s stored.

Nextcloud Spreadsheet is a collaborative spreadsheet editor that runs on infrastructure you choose, whether it’s your own server or that of a trusted provider. It’s open source, opens and saves both XLSX and ODS files, and lets your team edit the same sheet together in real time. This makes it a sovereign open source alternative to Excel and Google Sheets.

As part of Nextcloud Office, Nextcloud Spreadsheet is your editor of choice for complex calculations and sits alongside the document editor Nextcloud Write and the slide editor Nextcloud Present. Since it runs inside Nextcloud, you can easily share your spreadsheets with other team members, attach them to tasks, and post them to group chats.

All the spreadsheet features you rely on

If you’re coming from Excel or Google Sheets, you’ll quickly find the tools you work with every day in Nextcloud Spreadsheet, from formulas to charts to templates.

Nextcloud Spreadsheet gives you access to thousands of functions and formulas for analyzing data and running precise calculations. You can sort and filter large datasets and use macros to automate repetitive steps. When the numbers need to tell a story, various visualization options let you turn your data into charts.

Real-time collaboration with your team

Several people can work in the same spreadsheet at the same time, without emailing versions back and forth, and each collaborator’s cursor shows you who is working where. Comments on cells keep feedback attached to the exact figure it refers to. Changes are saved automatically, and version history lets you restore a sheet as it was before someone overwrote a formula.

Nextcloud’s granular access controls let you define exactly who can view, comment on, or edit a spreadsheet, whether you share it with individual colleagues or whole groups. When you need input from a client or partner, a public link lets people without a Nextcloud account view or edit the file. You can create several independently configured links for the same spreadsheet, giving one person read-only access and another editing rights, and require a one-time password to open a share.

Collaboration isn’t limited to a single Nextcloud instance. Thanks to its federated nature, teams on separate Nextcloud servers, such as subsidiaries or partner organizations, can work on the same spreadsheet.

Full compatibility with Excel files

Nextcloud Spreadsheet opens both XLSX and the older XLS format, so a spreadsheet you receive from an Excel user looks the same when you open it, and still works for them when you send it back.

Nextcloud Spreadsheet also supports ODS, the open-standard spreadsheet format used by LibreOffice or other OpenDocument tools. Because the format isn’t tied to any single vendor, your spreadsheets stay readable and editable in the long term.

Work on spreadsheets from anywhere, on any device

You can use Nextcloud Spreadsheet in any browser and on the go, thanks to a dedicated mobile view. For those who prefer to work locally, desktop clients for Nextcloud Office are available on Linux, macOS, and Windows. These let you edit files locally and save the changes back to your Nextcloud, while others can join the same editing session from their own desktop client or the browser.

Nextcloud Office is part of Nextcloud Hub, an open source software suite that combines it with Nextcloud Files, Talk, Groupware, and Assistant into one integrated workspace. Rather than switching between separate tools for file storage, chat, video calls, email, and document editing, Nextcloud Hub keeps them working together on the same infrastructure. In practice, this means that you can, for example, collaborate on a document with your team members during a video call, attach it to the calendar invite for the next meeting, and reference both the document and the corresponding discussions on the project’s kanban board. This makes Nextcloud Hub the open source alternative to Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

Get started with Nextcloud Spreadsheet in Nextcloud Office

You can install Nextcloud on your own server or sign up with a provider. You can also deploy it in an air-gapped environment to accommodate highly sensitive use cases. For larger organizations, Nextcloud Enterprise adds long-term support, guaranteed response times, and rapid security updates.

If you’re weighing a move away from Big Tech productivity tools or want a clearer picture of how Nextcloud Office compares to Microsoft Office, you can watch our on-demand webinar covering the risks associated with Microsoft’s productivity tools, the similarities and differences of Nextcloud’s solutions, and the compatibility between them.