There was much talk when Google bought Writely, and after a brief break, it has returned as Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

It works with Google Accounts so if you are lucky enough to already have a Google Mail account, all you need to do is to sign up at http://docs.google.com. Otherwise it is possible to sign up for an ordinary Google Account that gives access to most Google services apart from Google Mail.

Documents can be created from scratch or uploaded from a local disk. Supported formats include Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf), Open Document Text (.odt) and Star Office (.sxw) as well as HTML. Google Spreadsheet can accept Excel (.xls), Open Document (.ods) and Comma Separated Value (.csv).

An interesting alternative is to email the document to a special email address. At the moment this only works with the documents not spreadsheets. Either the contents of the email are entered into a new document or multiple compatible attachments are converted and added. In this case the text of the email is ignored.

Opening a document reveals just a single row of icons. It might seem limited compared to Microsoft Word but they cover most ordinary tasks including basic formatting as well as bullet points and paragraph numbering.

Styles are supported, making formatting much easier, although it’s a shame that there is no format painter. This is especially missed when highlighting text. Google Docs does not remember the last colour used and it is easy to pick a similar but nevertheless different colour. There is also no word count in Docs, although that may only be of interest to journalists paid by the word.

Documents are automatically saved every few minutes and thankfully Google Docs stores past revisions of a file. The internal format of Google Docs is HTML and it is possible to edit this directly.

Editing spreadsheets does not feel as polished as Document but this has a lot to do with the differences between word documents and spreadsheets and the limitations of online applications. For example, it is not possible to select cells in a formula with the arrow keys as it is in Microsoft Excel, although the mouse can be used instead. Thankfully there is a wide range of available formulas including logical and statistical functions.

Rather than just create an online version of Word and Excel, Google has included collaboration. Other users can be added, and removed, with emails generated to alert others. Collaboration can take place in real time with more than one person editing a file at the same time. Given that the service is without cost at the moment this is a very powerful tool.

The greatest disadvantage with services such as these is that they presume an internet connection. This is fine in the office or at home but not when travelling. What is really needed is some kind of sync tool to check documents out for editing on a local drive and returning to the server.

Whatever its faults Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a very powerful part of the Google empire. The collaboration tools rival some of the more advanced features of Office and are well worth investigation by any group needing to share documents across a wide area.

Also consider:
Tesco Complete Office software suite
An excellent budget alternative to Microsoft Office, providing all the basics required of an office suite.

Microsoft Works Suite 2006
It lacks advanced tools such as relational databases, but for most users Works Suite 2006 is the ideal office package

Thinkfree Online office software
Thinkfree is more limited than your usual office software but will be appealing to those looking to share documents