Microsoft Excel for Android: the full spreadsheet, if you sign in and skip the AI

The spreadsheet you need when you're away from a desk

Microsoft Excel for Android is Microsoft's spreadsheet app for phones and tablets. It's for the moments when a workbook needs changing and your laptop is somewhere else.

That covers two kinds of people. Some already live in Excel at work and need to fix a figure, check a total or pass a sheet on from a train. Others have never opened a spreadsheet and want a budget, an expense log or a simple project plan without starting from a blank grid.

Microsoft tries to serve both. Experienced users get the formulas, charts and data tools they already know. Newcomers get templates that hand them a ready-made structure. Put more than 1,000,000,000 installs alongside that, and the chances are good that the files people send you will open in this app as their authors meant.

What does the work

The core is a full spreadsheet. You write ordinary formulas, sort and filter columns, and build charts from your data. Pivot charts are included as well, for summarising a large table by category without totting it up by hand. If your phone is mostly for checking and tidying sheets other people built, these are the tools you'll rely on.

Charts can be edited and annotated after you insert them. That helps if you're preparing a figure to send rather than just reading one.

There's also a draw tab for touch screens. You can highlight areas of a worksheet, scribble on a chart or handwrite an equation. It's for marking up and reviewing, which is a big part of what people do with spreadsheets on a phone.

Formatting tools cover the presentation side, so a sheet built on a phone doesn't have to look plain when it reaches a colleague's desktop.

Budgets, expenses and plans from templates

Microsoft pitches the app strongly at personal finance. There are ready-made templates for budgets split by category and time period, a personal expense tracker, and sheets for project plans and financial analysis. The developer also suggests using it as a rough tax calculator for estimates.

Be clear about what that means. These are spreadsheets with the structure already set up. You still type in the numbers.

That suits anyone who wants control over the layout and logic and doesn't mind entering figures themselves. Anyone expecting a budgeting app that does the categorising for them should look elsewhere. Excel will add up whatever you put in. It won't go and fetch the numbers.

Sharing and working with other people

Collaboration is built in. You can invite people to a workbook and choose whether they can edit it, only view it, or add comments. For a shared household budget or a team tracker, that choice of access is the feature that counts.

Two smaller options are handy day to day. You can paste a worksheet straight into the body of an email, or send a link to the workbook instead of attaching a copy. Sending a link means everyone works on the same file, so no one ends up editing an out-of-date copy.

Where the account and the subscription come in

The app is free to install, but it isn't free of conditions. On phones and smaller tablets, creating or editing anything needs you to sign in with a Microsoft account. The account itself is free. Even so, no account means no editing, so anyone hoping to avoid signing in at all should know that before installing.

The Copilot AI features are a separate matter. Microsoft says Copilot can summarise data, point out trends, build charts and tables from a typed request, and suggest budgeting and forecasting figures. All of that is tied to a qualifying Microsoft 365 subscription, as is what Microsoft calls the full Microsoft 365 experience across phone, tablet, PC and Mac.

What it isn't built for

It's a spreadsheet, and its limits are the limits of spreadsheets. It doesn't track your spending for you, link to a bank or remind you about bills. The finance features are layouts you maintain by hand.

Its tools are aimed at reviewing and adjusting work as much as building it. Sort, filter, annotate and share are the jobs it's set up for on a small screen. For a large model built from scratch, a desktop is still the more sensible place to do it.

The AI help is the obvious feature people may expect to get free, and they won't. If Copilot is the reason you're interested, budget for the subscription.

Who should install it, and who shouldn't

Install it if you work with Excel files and need to open, check, fix and share them on the move. Signing into a free account unlocks the parts most people need: formulas, charts, pivot charts, sort and filter, templates and shared editing. For that job the offer is fair.

It's also a sensible start for anyone who wants a budget or expense sheet and is happy to type in the figures, because the templates take away the blank-page problem.

Skip it if you won't create a Microsoft account, since editing depends on one. Skip it too if what you really want is an app that tracks spending for you. And if Copilot is the draw, treat it as a paid product with a renewal you'll have to manage.

Score: 3.9. The spreadsheet tools that matter are available with a free account. It loses marks for requiring sign-in before you can edit anything, for keeping the AI behind a subscription, and for subscription terms that leave you no way out mid-period.