The Excel Services feature of SharePoint Server 2007 enables Excel 2007 to publish spreadsheets to the Web. Shown here is a spreadsheet in the Firefox Web browser that was published from Excel 2007 to SharePoint Server.

For interactive spreadsheets that are regularly used by large audiences, Excel 2007 and Excel Services have advantages over sharing Excel files on file servers or distributing files by e-mail. In particular, Excel Services centralizes formulas and data, ensuring that they are current and preventing unauthorized changes. Excel Services will particularly benefit spreadsheets that access data from corporate data sources (e.g., spreadsheets that summarize from enterprise resource planning systems) by centralizing the data retrieval logic for the data sources.

Unlike the Office Web Components (OWC) previously used for Web distribution of Excel spreadsheets, Excel Services does not require installation of ActiveX controls or any other software on the client, and it can work with browsers other than Internet Explorer.