If at the moment we cannot afford to spend these figures, we have ended up in the right guide! Here we will show you how to download excel free on any home PC, so you can easily edit or create a spreadsheet xls or xslx, without having to pay anything. Obviously the best results will be obtained only by paying the license or the subscription: we can see these tips as alternatives or free trials to be exploited before deciding whether to buy Office or not.READ ALSO: All the ways to use and download Office for free
How to download Excel for free
In the following chapters, we will find all the safe or legal methods to be able to download Excel for free on our computer or, as a valid alternative, try free apps and programs that can replace Excel for home use, so you don’t have to buy a license or pay a monthly or annual subscription to Office 365.
Use Office Online
Microsoft provides a completely free Excel Web App, which we can use to create and view spreadsheets quickly and easily (with some limits).
First let’s go to the Excel Online page from the Google Chrome browser for PC (fundamental for the purpose), log in with our Microsoft account (if it’s not we have one, let’s create it on the fly) then click on the top right on the menu with the three dots, we select the menu Other tools and click on Create shortcut.
In the window that appears we put the checkmark on Open as a window, then click on Create to add the page to the Web Apps managed by Chrome.
Now simply open in the address bar chrome: // apps /, right-click on the newly created app, select Create shortcuts and finally make sure that, in the new window that appears, both items are checked.
Checking on the desktop of our computer we will see a new app appear with the name assigned to the Excel Web App; click on it to be able use Excel for free as if it were any PC program.
The limitations of this solution are clear: we can open and save only within ours OneDrive cloud space (better to access them immediately from Windows to facilitate file management) and some advanced functions are not available. If we use Excel sporadically for simple things, this is currently the best solution to download Excel for free.
NOTE: A constant Internet connection is required in order to use the Web App.
The free trial version of Microsoft 365
If we want to use the full version of Microsoft Excel for free on our computer, we can also test the free version of Microsoft 365.
By opening the page that we have reported to you and pressing the button Try it free for 1 month, we will be able to obtain a free trial version of Office with access to the cloud features of Office 365, we will only have to log in with a Microsoft account, indicate a valid payment method (also essential for obtaining the free trial) and finally download the file installation instructions, provided via email link.
Before the expiration of the 30-day trial period we will have to cancel the trial period, under penalty of immediate payment of the subscription from 99 € per year; to do this, simply go to the Office management page before the trial period expires.
Use Google Sheets
The first free alternative to Microsoft Excel that we can download for free without time limits or without trial periods is Google Sheets.
We add this site as a Web App on the computer (as seen on Excel Online) then use the key + to create new spreadsheets, press on one of the models available in home to start a new project or load our spreadsheets on Drive to be able to open or edit them (for this purpose we recommend downloading the Google Drive Backup and Sync program ).
NOTE: Google Sheets also works offline without an internet connection.
Use LibreOffice
If we are looking for a complete program to replace Excel, we suggest you also try the free LibreOffice suite, which provides the program for spreadsheets. LibreOffice Calc.
With Calc, we will have a complete spreadsheet, with all the primary functions well accessible and with the ability to quickly create complex graphs, tables, and mathematical calculations both in the Office file format (XLS is XLSX) and in the free document format (ODF). When saving a new file we can choose some format to use, so you can always choose whether to save Excel-compatible documents or create documents in free formats.
To deepen the discussion on LibreOffice and its free philosophy, we can continue reading on our article Download LibreOffice for free in Italian with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint on PC, Mac and Linux.
Conclusions
As we have seen, it is not necessary to download crack or pre-activated versions of Office (full of viruses or trojans) in order to download Excel for free on our faithful computer: with a few clicks of the mouse, we can transform the online version of Excel into a “true” program or download the trial version of Office 365, so you can use all the functions of Excel for a limited period of time.
If we do not want compromises and we want complete and free offline programs, we can rely on Google Sheets and especially LibreOffice, currently the best free alternatives to Excel and the other programs in the Office suite.
To become an expert and practical user of Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice, we recommend following our free “courses” on How to Create an invoice with Excel, from scratch, simple and personalized, How to do calculations on Excel and finally How to use Excel Formulas and Functions.