More on Google Spreadsheets

I have now had a chance to play a little bit with Google's spreadsheet. I still have grave concerns about its security and HIPAA compliance, which to my mind makes it little more than an academic exercise. However, it still could be a useful tool for data that doesn't have any sensitivity.

One problem with this system for complex spreadsheets are outside cell references. In many cases, I have one spreadsheet that generates a figure, which is used by another spreadsheet as an input toward a separate figure, or for a report. In actuality, many of my work reports concatenate data from multiple spreadsheets.

This is a problem here. Unless I am missing something, any spreadsheet on Google's servers has to live in its own sandbox, without referencing any data not somewhere in its own workbook. This is a severe restriction on complexity.