With the venerable history of terminal based spreadsheets, I was surprised at the lack of CLI spreadsheet tools. Programs like VisiCalc, Lotus 123, and Quattro Pro were once the killer apps of the DOS world. Sc-im seems to be the only one that may still be active at this point.
See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications.
sc-im (Spreadsheet Calculator Improvised)
This is a complex application that uses vim based key bindings. If you’re in the process of learning vim keys, this will make you proficient in a short time.
There are tons of commands and formulas. Checking the man page will give you an idea of how much is there. Very impressive.
Fortunately, there is a tutorial that is in the form of multiple sheets. You can download the files from the tutorial GitHub link above. If you are using git, the easiest thing is to clone the repository with the following command.
git clone https://github.com/jonnieey/Sc-im-Tutorial tutorial
# open the first lesson
cd tutorial
sc-im Lesson0_General.sc
Other Tools
There is another application called Visidata that should be mentioned. It is a tabular data viewer that says it will read Excel files (among a larger list of file formats). Although I’m yet to play around with it, it looks to be robust and actively developed. If your need is only data viewing and manipulation (searching, sorting, column tweaks, etc.), then Visidata is worth looking into.