Hello, all. The last two times I visited General Questions to ask a question, I got complete satisfaction. Those questions had to do with math; this one doesn’t.
A few of the Excel spreadsheets I’ve written are, I think, worthwhile, and I want to be able to add them to the Internet’s supply of useful information by making them available on my web site, presumably as HTML files. I know how to make the spreadsheets available as .XLSX files for visitors to download and then open in Excel; what I want is for the spreadsheets to be interactive directly on a web page. There are thousands of such interactive calculators on the Internet that require only a web browser. The spreadsheets are saved in Excel 2010 but I have 2013 if that helps.
How does one convert a spreadsheet so it shows up on a web page and allows the user to enter, say, a 6 where there had been a 7 and see the new results, just as in a normal spreadsheet? After an hour or so of investigation on the Internet it’s not obvious to me what steps to take or what direction to pursue.
Are there services that do this, even if for a fee? Do I have to master certain aspects of CSS or Javascript?
Is there by any chance some magically easy way to make my spreadsheets available on my web site that doesn’t require the visitor to already have Excel installed? Are there better questions I should be asking?
AFAIK you couldn’t just upload it as a Google Drive Spreadsheet because it would just end up being a shared spreadsheet that would be updated with new data any time people put in new values.
But, if you upload as a template people would bring the template into their own Drive and then have their own copy to manipulate. No Excel needed.
Idea 1:
Microsoft sells a serverside app you can install which among other things gives you spreadsheets inside browsers. The problem is that server app sells for big money and you need some dedicated Windows servers to run it on. But if you had all that you could make any spreadsheets on that system available to the anonymous internet for anyone to read & use, but (optionally) not modify and save.
Ideas 2:
MSFT also has Excel Online as part of Live.com. You could create an account there and place your spreadsheet there. Then you could access and edit it through a browser without needing Excel.
I don’t know whether it’s possible to share a Live.com folder with any / all live.com users. I suspect not. You definitely can share it with a huge list of specifically named users.
But you could / should check into whether you can share with any/everyone. If that is possible, then you could offer your spreadsheet(s) that way. Everyone who wanted to use your spreadsheet would have to have a Live.com user id, but those are free and no obligation, just like a Apple store ID or google/ gmail ID.
I think you could do this with OneDrive, Microsoft’s online folders. It’s hosted in OneDrive, you just paste in some JavaScript on your web page. You can define what users are able to do - view, sort/filter, or edit data. Nothing would be saved back to your original spreadsheet, and everyone gets their own version.
Thanks to all of you who offered suggestions. It’s taken me awhile to respond because some things took time.
So far nothing suggested is exactly what I want, which is such that anyone calling upon that page, an Excel spreadsheet whose name ends with .xlsx, can open it in Excel online. Maybe everything I want isn’t possible right now.
Are you trying to share a spreadsheet and allow public editing, but not to the degree where they can just delete everything and destroy your work? Like a calculator where they can only enter the “6” in certain cells?
If so, this is easy to do with a Google Sheet. You can make a spreadsheet (or import one from Excel) and protect the whole sheet except for certain cells where you want to allow public input, like so:
You can share that link with anyone and they can edit only the cells that you allow them to. Or they can sign in to their Google account, go to File -> Make a Copy, and have a fully-editable copy that they can fully modify. No Excel needed or anything aside from a browser, really.
Once you make that spreadsheet, the link is all you need to give anyone for them to edit the protected cells. You can link to it or embed the whole editor interface in an “iframe” on your website. Use the File->Publish command to enable that embedding, and Google will generate the appropriate HTML code for you.
In theory Excel Online (via Live/OneDrive/SkyDrive/whatever MS calls it right now) has this same function, but it doesn’t really work for me. First, you can’t protect a sheet online, you have to do it in offline Excel first. But then once you upload it, nobody can edit the unlocked cells… so either I’m not using it right or it’s just broken.
TroutMan, I did follow up with your suggestion, to use OneDrive, for which I thank you again. It’s not perfect but it’s better than learning more JavaScript than I have to. You can see a few early results on my page at http://barelybad.com/00convertexceltohtml03.htm
Go straight to Solving Triangles, which took longer than the other five put together.
Reply, your suggestion to use Google Sheets might be a good one, and I will look into it shortly.
