Search for "Excel" on the Play Store or App Store and you will find dozens of apps promising a free Excel experience on your phone. Most people looking for a free Excel app for Android or iPhone don't actually need every feature of desktop Microsoft Excel. They want to make a table, enter data quickly, and see it on another device later.
This guide compares the three most common choices for working with Excel sheets on mobile, Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and Table Notes, so you can pick the right one for how you work.
What do you actually need from an Excel app on mobile?
Before choosing, be honest about the job. Most people use a spreadsheet on their phone for one of these:
- Recording data on the go: sales, orders, attendance, expenses, site visits.
- Keeping lists: customers, products, contacts, inventory.
- Viewing or lightly editing an Excel sheet someone sent you.
- Heavy analysis: pivot tables, complex formulas, macros.
The last one is genuinely a desktop job, and full spreadsheet software is the right tool for it. The first three are where a phone-first table app shines.
Microsoft Excel for mobile
Microsoft Excel on Android and iPhone is the real Excel, so it opens .xlsx files exactly as they look on a PC and keeps the familiar cell grid, formulas and charts. If your work revolves around Excel files shared by colleagues, it is the natural choice for viewing and quick edits. You need a Microsoft account to edit, and some advanced features require a Microsoft 365 subscription.
The catch is the screen. MS Excel was designed for a mouse and a big monitor. On a phone you are tapping tiny cells, zooming in and out, and typing everything into a formula bar. It works, but data entry is slow.
Google Sheets
Google Sheets is free with a Google account and is excellent for sharing: several people can edit the same sheet, and it lives in Google Drive alongside your other files. Like Excel, it is a cell grid, so on mobile it has the same small-screen problems for data entry. Offline editing has to be switched on for each file, which is easy to forget before heading somewhere with no signal.
Table Notes
Table Notes takes a different approach. Instead of a grid of cells, you make a table with typed columns, and each row is filled in through a simple form on your phone. It is the simplest Excel-style app for people who mainly record and organise data on mobile:
- Column types made for phones: Number, Amount, Date, Time, Select (dropdown), Checkbox, Phone, Formula, plus Photo, Audio, Signature, Location (Google Maps) and Barcode, things a normal Excel sheet can't capture easily.
- Works fully offline in the mobile app, and syncs to the cloud the moment you reconnect.
- Excel import and export, so you can bring in an existing Excel sheet and send one back out.
- PDF reports with your company header, logo and footer, shared straight to email or WhatsApp.
- Teams: share a table with collaborators as administrators, editors or viewers.
- Web access: open the same tables on your PC at tablenotes.net.
The Table Notes app is free to download on Android and iPhone, with a premium plan for advanced features. It is not trying to replace desktop Excel for complex financial models; it replaces the Excel sheet you were struggling to fill in on your phone.
Quick comparison
- Best for opening and editing existing .xlsx files: Microsoft Excel.
- Best for real-time shared spreadsheets in Google Drive: Google Sheets.
- Best for fast data entry on mobile, offline work, photos, signatures and locations: Table Notes.
Many people use more than one. A common pattern is to collect data in Table Notes on the phone, then export an Excel sheet for the accountant or for analysis on a PC in Excel or Google Sheets.
Do you need a whole office suite?
Office suite apps bundle a word processor (like Word), a spreadsheet and slides in one download. That is useful if you write documents on your phone. But if all you need is a table, a dedicated table maker app is lighter, faster and easier to use than a full office suite.
How to get started with Table Notes
- Download Table Notes from Google Play or the App Store.
- Create a new table, or import an existing Excel sheet.
- Set a type for each column (Date, Amount, Select and so on).
- Add rows using the form, online or offline.
- Open the same table on your PC at tablenotes.net whenever you want a bigger screen.
For a step-by-step setup, read how to make an Excel sheet on your phone.
The takeaway
If you live in .xlsx files, use Microsoft Excel. If you share everything through Google Drive, use Google Sheets. If you want a free Excel-style app that makes data entry on mobile genuinely easy, with offline work, photos and PDF reports, try Table Notes.