Spreadsheet software is important for homes, students and businesses, so we’ve put together a lineup with something for all these arenas. We chose good-quality spreadsheet software, with a solid mix of paid-for and free products. To avoid oversimplifying things, we opted not to include very basic models that don’t provide anything other than a basic grid, and we haven’t included programs that aren’t secure, as spreadsheets often deal with sensitive or important data.

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We looked at compatibility, versatility, features and available support to determine which spreadsheets deserved a spot on our lineup. If you need a complete office suite, take a look at our office software guide, where you’ll find a nice mix of free and priced options. On this site you will find articles related to spreadsheets as well as reviews of spreadsheet software.

Best Spreadsheet Software for Businesses

Microsoft Excel is our choice for the best spreadsheet software for businesses because of its versatility and functionality. Businesses need software they can rely on, and Excel fits the bill, helping you stay on track with simple or complex spreadsheets. There is an extensive range of formulas that you can use to make calculations or perform specific functions, and you can filter data according to your business needs.

This professional-grade software isn’t free, but it is available with a reasonable monthly subscription, and even after several decades, it’s still the most respected office spreadsheet solution. This software works across PC, Mac and mobile devices. With OneDrive, you can share and access your spreadsheets in the cloud from anywhere and work on them collaboratively. The majority of other file formats are compatible with Excel files, so should someone send you a file in another file format, Excel should be able to open it and render the contents correctly.

Microsoft Excel

Excel is part of the Microsoft Office suite and works well in conjunction with the other programs in the bundle. You can purchase Excel as a stand-alone product, as part of a desktop suite or as part of Office 365. It’s most functional and most cost-effective as part of the Microsoft Office desktop suite or as part of Office 365.

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Best Spreadsheet Software for Students

Many of these spreadsheet programs would serve schools and students well. However, LibreOffice Calc stands out because it’s free and open source, so there are no licensing restrictions. This means that schools can provide students with copies of the software and install the software across multiple PCs and laptops without significant expense, and without breaching any licensing terms that may be associated with similar software. Choosing a well-rounded free program also means that any student with a computer can access the software, so it puts every student on a level playing field. Additionally, because it’s open source, LibreOffice, including its Calc software, is a great educational tool for students working on digital and programming skills.

This spreadsheet software has plenty of features and is versatile enough to equal its biggest premium-cost rivals. It has an impressive selection of templates and allows students to create their own or import them from third-party sources. Students and teachers can also use extensions or add-ons designed to increase Calc’s versatility as an educational tool.

LibreOffice Calc

Calc is the spreadsheet software included with LibreOffice. It’s a popular choice for academic, home and business users looking for an inexpensive spreadsheet program because it’s open source. The whole office suite it comes in is free and doesn’t have any licensing restrictions.

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Best Spreadsheet Software for Home Users

For home users, Google Sheets is our first choice. Part of the Google Apps suite and connected to Google Drive, this spreadsheet software is versatile, free to use and user-friendly. You can easily create to-do lists, schedules and holiday shopping lists, then access them from any computer or mobile device with the Google Drive app. Because it has an array of formulas ready for use, along with a huge number of commonly used templates, this spreadsheet application makes it easy to keep track of home or business finances and to create budgets, calendars, planners, invoices and time sheets.

This is a web-based spreadsheet application, making it easy to access, and you get a generous amount of free cloud storage when you sign up. With its free, easy accessibility and simple usage, Google Sheets is attractive to all kinds of users. It’s easy to share your spreadsheets via email invitation or a link, as well as to set read-only, comment or edit permissions for each person you share with.

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is part of the Google Apps suite. Like the rest of the suite's productivity applications, it has a focus on easy collaboration and a simple, user-friendly interface. While it’s not available as a stand-alone application, you’ll likely find yourself using at least some of the other apps on a regular basis.

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Compatibility

Compatibility with Microsoft Excel files is key for any spreadsheet software, simply because so many people use that program to create spreadsheets. Therefore, the spreadsheet software you choose should be able to read and write XLS and XLSX files and render them correctly. Choose software that allows you to easily convert your files into PDF format if you want to ensure your spreadsheets cannot be easily altered without leaving an electronic footprint. Creating PDF files also reduces file sizes and lets you easily add password protection. If you create spreadsheets that you want to publish online, choose a program that lets you easily convert spreadsheets into HTML.

Versatility

How versatile your spreadsheet software should be depends entirely on what you want to use it for. If you’re a student or a professional wanting to impress with your presentation or data collation, you need to be able to integrate graphics and alter the fonts, colors and other aesthetic qualities. If you want simple visual representations of your collected data, you need to be able to easily create charts from your entries.

Consider whether you need remote or mobile access to your spreadsheets. If so, you need an easily shareable or cloud-compatible application. For those who work collaboratively, it’s important to have spreadsheet software that allows simultaneous editing and multi-user functionality. If all you want to do is save, email and print spreadsheets, a desktop-only program will suffice.

Features

The best spreadsheet software programs have extensive formula selections that are easily accessible. Your software should also have a variety of templates on hand for common spreadsheets so you don’t have to lay out budget sheets, calendars and planners from scratch every time. If you’re sharing or collaborating with other people, make sure you can lock or freeze specific columns so others can’t accidentally edit or overwrite them.

Also note how many rows and columns a spreadsheet can accommodate. Some are unlimited, while others restrict you to just 250. If you deal with complex or large quantities of data, choosing a spreadsheet application that features pivot tables makes sense, as they provide an easy way of summarizing data.

Support

Whether you’re an advanced user or a novice, it's invaluable for your software to have a solid support system, including plenty of tutorials, step-by-step instructions and FAQs pages. Having email, phone and forum support at your disposal helps to ensure you don’t get stuck without a solution.

Truly great free PDF editors are hard to come by, but there are some excellent tools around if you know where to look.

PDF documents are designed to look and behave exactly the same way on any device. That makes it a brilliant format for sharing, but editing them is another matter. Most office software and photo editors let you export documents in PDF format, but editing requires a dedicated tool. That's because PDF was initially a proprietary format owned by Adobe, and it still owns some of the technologies associated with it. Other companies can license those technologies, but only for a fee that's usually passed on to you – the user.

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There aren’t many free PDF editors, and even fewer that won’t leave your documents with unsightly watermarks. That's why we've rounded up the very best free PDF editing software that's free to use and won't add any unwanted extras to your work.

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1. ApowerPDF

Edit your PDFs and even create new ones from scratch

There are two options on the ApowerPDF homepage: ‘Launch Online’ and ‘Download Desktop’. Despite appearances, these aren’t the same tools. The desktop software is only a trial of a premium product, and will watermark your edited PDFs. The tool we’re using here is the online editor, which has no such limitations.

Click ‘Launch Online’ and you’ll be prompted to download and run a small launcher app, after which the online editor will launch. You can edit text (including formatting), add text and images, encrypt documents with a password, convert your PDF to an image file and add comments.

You can even create your own PDFs from scratch – a feature you’ll usually only find in premium PDF editing software.

Unlike the desktop application, there’s no tool for removing watermarks from PDFs, but that’s a minor quibble. ApowerPDF is a remarkable PDF editor; just make sure you’re using the online edition.

If you would prefer the desktop version, Apower PDF costs from $29.95 (£25) after the free trial period.

2. PDF-XChange Editor

Another superb tool for editing text in PDFs, with built-in OCR

If you need to edit the text in a PDF, PDF-XChange Editor is ideal. It lets you retype, delete, and reformat text, and adapts well if the document uses a font that isn’t installed on your PC. You can also attach comments, split PDFs, and extract pages.

One of PDF-Xchange Editor’s best features is the ability to use OCR to recognize text in scanned documents – ideal if you only have a printout rather than the original file (a handout from a lecture, for example).

Some of the features visible in the menus and toolbars are only available in the premium version of the software, PDF-XChange Editor Plus, but you can easily hover your mouse pointer over an icon to find out if it’s included.

If you go ahead and use a premium tool anyway (adding polygonal shapes or new text boxes, for example), your document will be watermarked. Look out for a warning message underneath the main toolbar before saving your work, just in case.

The paid-for downloads, PDF-XChange Editor costs $43.50 (£35) for the normal version, but for additional features such as form creation and use you will need to buy PDF-XChange Editor Plus, which costs $54.50 ($48).

3. Sedja

An online-only free PDF editor with a great choice of tools

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Free online PDF editor Sedja offers an excellent range of tools, with just one caveat: if you're still working after three hours and haven't saved your document, it will be deleted automatically. It's quite a generous time limit, but worth bearing in mind if your PDF needs a lot of work.

You can add text, images and links, sign documents, add annotations, and insert ellipses and rectangles. There’s also a ‘whiteout’ option, though this simply draws a white rectangle – it doesn’t remove any data. There’s no OCR either, so you won’t be able to edit text in scanned PDFs.

When you’ve finished editing, click ‘Apply changes’ and you’ll be able to download the document, send it to Dropbox or Google Drive, delete it, or access a shareable link. The link will expire after seven days.

There is a free version, available to download or use in the cloud, which has limited features. To open these up you will need to pay for a paid plan. The Web Week Pass is aimed at short-term use, and costs $5 (£4) to access the web-based version for 7 days. If you'd prefer to pay on a monthly recurring basis, then the cloud version is $7.50 (£6) per month.

A desktop version is available to download and use, which also allows web access, and that costs $63 annually, which works out as the equivalent of $5.25 per month.

4. PDFescape

A free online PDF editor that lets you add new text and images

There are two versions of PDFescape: a free web app and a premium desktop program. Here we're using the online editor; if you download the desktop software, you'll only receive a trial of the premium edition.

PDFescape's online editor lets you create new text boxes on the page, but unfortunately there's no way to edit existing text. You can create simple geometric shapes and– as with Sedja, above – add white rectangles to obscure parts of the document when it's printed.

PDFescape lets you select a picture from your PC, then drag a rectangle to insert it. You can insert text fields too, enabling you to create simple forms – a rare and welcome feature for a free PDF editor.

While the online editor is free for editing, creating forms, and sharing, there are also two paid-for versions available. The Premium version is for desktop and includes print to scan, and is available for $2.99 (£2.50) per month. The Ultimate version costs $5.99 per month and comes with more advanced features, such as publishing PDF forms.

5. PDFsam Basic

A simple but well designed PDF editor for quick tasks

The latter half of PDFsam’s name is short for ‘split and merge’, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the Basic edition.

You’ll be offered a free trial of the premium version (including full editing, object insertion, secure signing, and OCR), but once that expires you’ll be left with a simple but well designed tool for chopping large documents into manageable chunks, performing a PDF cut-and-shut, or extracting selected pages. You can also use PDFsam Basic to rotate pages, which is very handy if you’ve accidentally scanned a document upside down.

There are no tools for tweaking the actual content of the document, but all of PDFsam Basic’s page-management options are very clearly laid out, and it’s very clear which of the options shown in the main menu are only available in the premium edition.

However, if you'd prefer the advanced features of PDFsam Enhanced, there are 3 different plans available, costing $39 ($34), $49 (£44), or $69 (£60) a year, depending on the range of extra features required.

• Find out how to convert PDFs to Word documents the easy way