Top 5 Spreadsheet Add-Ins

PCWorld.com Downloads Team

1. Spreadsheet Assistant: Don't settle for what comes in the shrink-wrap. This software extends your control over Excel through a number of add-ins, many of which you'll use and some of which you'll come to depend on.

With Spreadsheet Assistant you can perform any math action on a range of cells. True, you can do the same in Excel yourself, but as anyone familiar with Excel can attest, it's not easy to figure out. This add-in spares you the hassle of trying to figure out formulas; you simply highlight a range of cells, select the 'Any Math Action' feature, and enter the action.

One of the most valuable features is the one that eliminates "wild scrolling" when you're looking for a row that's further down (or up) on your spreadsheet. In addition, the program lets you add sticky notes to your worksheets for quick reminders, and it also allows you to assign any feature to a button, letting you better customize Excel and make it work the way you want it to.

2. Power Utility Pak 2000: This package includes 50 utilities and 40 worksheet functions, and features a pop-up calculator, a reminder alarm, a time tracker, and four games. It lets you display the word count of text in cells, generate random integers in a range, and add a 3D border effect to a cell or range. You can set the scroll area of your worksheet to prevent users from getting lost too.

The pack also includes some relatively minor, but still handy, features such as the ability to export charts to stand-alone.gif,.jpg, and.tif files, the ability to automatically back up copies of your workbook, and the ability to rearrange the order of the sheets in a workbook.

3. XLStat: It's rare for the price of an add-in to approach that of the program it supports, but that's the case with XLStat. The saving grace, in this instance, is that you get some tools that are genuinely useful. Even the more elementary features of this program are well thought out: You can flag data within an Excel table, for instance, by changing the color or the size of data to fit a criterion you define.

You also can create box plots and stem-leaf plots to better visualize your data or compare several variables. The program's categorical sorting allows you to sort by more than one variable (it will first sort by the first variable, then the second, and so on).

This add-in's advanced features let you perform cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, and nonlinear regressions.

4. GS-Calc: This spreadsheet add-in packs a lot of bang for the buck. It includes a number of functions that improve your ability to analyze data, whether that data is for financial or statistical purposes. Its interface has dual panes that show you the spreadsheet you're working on as well as a hierarchy of related spreadsheets. You can also group worksheets in folders, adding some Explorer-like functionality to Excel.

The program includes some attractive bells and whistles: You can create 2D and 3D charts that--unlike the charts in other programs--manage to look professional and not overly gimmicky. You can import files from (and export files to) DBase III-IV, FoxPro 2.x, Excel 97-2000, and Access 2000. The program includes e-mail and fax support; it also supports a ridiculous number of columns and rows (512 and 2,097,152, respectively). If you're crunching that much data, you certainly need some help, and GS-Calc is a good choice for that reason alone.

5. Spreadsheet Detective: Spreadsheets may look clean and impeccably accurate, but the truth is that they are all too often subject to error. Spreadsheet Detective is a good safeguard, since it is designed to quickly scan your inconsistencies and erroneous formulas. It's sort of like a spelling checker in the way it works: You let it scan your spreadsheet, and it highlights what it thinks are errors.

There are several degrees of errors that it detects; most useful may be the way the program identifies errors in your application of formulas. How often have your screwy results been the result of not correctly applying formulas to a row of cells? Spreadsheet Detective helps you identify the problem by highlighting cells that have the same formula with cross-hatched lines, while giving cells that have other formulas horizontal stripes or no shading at all.

This version includes a workbook data flow summary, named range dialogs, and a new sensitivity reporting feature.