Quip is taking another swing at Excel with better spreadsheet features

Quip, a Silicon Valley startup that's taking on the giants of the productivity software market, announced a major update to its spreadsheet capabilities Wednesday that's aimed at bringing its service more in line with Microsoft Excel. 

The service's spreadsheets now include features like the ability to merge cells, validate data and filter information in a sheet. With this update, users can also insert spreadsheets into documents so data and commentary can reside in the same place. It's all tied together with Quip's signature chat feature, which lets users discuss what's going on inside a spreadsheet while they're working on it together. 

These updates are key to helping Quip compete with its biggest rivals in the cloud productivity suite space: Microsoft's Office 365 and Google Apps for Work. Those two services have their own spreadsheet applications, and this update makes Quip's upstart offering more appealing to people who have richer spreadsheet needs. 

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