To let people view a spreadsheet (or just part of it) without specifically inviting them to collaborate, you can publish it as a webpage, a PDF or an Excel file, and several other formats. You can then easily share that published version with people who don't have a Google Account.
To publish a spreadsheet, follow these steps:
- Open the Share menu in the upper right corner of the page and select Publish as a web page.
- In the window that appears, select All sheets or a specific sheet or range of cells you want to publish, and click the Start publishing button. Then, click OK.
- Under 'Get a link to the published data, ' select a format from the drop-down menu to get a unique public URL for the sheets or range of data you've selected to publish.
- Copy the link and share it with others. You can even embed whole spreadsheets, or parts of spreadsheets, in your blog or webpage.
Publishing tips
- To stop publishing at any time, open the Share menu, select Publish as a web page, click the Stop publishing button, and click OK.
- You can select the option to 'Automatically re-publish when changes are made' to the spreadsheet. If you deselect this option, all changes made after publishing won't be reflected in the web-accessible version.
The .xls option is available for publishing all sheets only, not specific sheets or cell ranges.
If you use Google Apps, your domain administrator may have specified that only those within your domain can view published spreadsheets.