I would bite the bullet and go with either Open office.org or just get a version of MS office. Also look around for a older version of lotus that was a good one. But Excel is the king and openoffice is a good substitute.
Here is a cheap, but not free option
http://officebestdeal.com/OPPs I did a little research on this due to taking a close look at it and found that it is a scam, it is nothing but OPen Office re named and sold for $12 Hey open office is free!!
I use Open Office at home for the spreadsheet and it is very close to Excel, but i will say in my opinion Excell is a little bit better. There are more tools in Excel. But for easy preads and stuff OO is pretty good.