Sheets with more than one grid and bigger, more organised workbooks

Suggestions
1

I have originally posted these ideas in freeoffice forum but I decided to post it here as well in the hope that your dev team may decide to embrace the idea in the future as well. Both apps are great alternatives to Ms office.

Multi-grid sheets
Sheets should support more than one grid. Each grid should have its name and can support its own filtering, freeze and sorting operations . This is similar to mac numbers and rows.com . Grids could be resized to fit the table you are creating and when printing you can select which grid could be included in the print. Currently all spreadsheet apps follow the excel model, one endless grid that can be used unfortunately for only one table. The idea is that grids could complement each other in terms of information . One could grow endlessly while the other could provide analytics.

Bigger, more organized workbooks
This idea would complement the first one and it is that a workbook should be able to contain hundreds of sheets but they are not all loaded into the ram when you open the workbook, unless you designate a certain sheet to be loaded on startup. Instead it should load a sheet browser that functions like a file manager with each sheet having its own icon. You should be able to group them by letter or create groups and subgroups and direct your sheets to them . When you open a sheet , it is loaded into the ram and its tab is shown, but when all sheets are closed only the sheet browser is shown . This would allow a better ram consumption.

I understand all excel alternative want to to follow its model for compatibility. But this may limit originality.

3

Hello @shagi
We are looking into described ideas. I will update this thread once we have something to share.

4

Thanks a lot. Grids do not need to be movable like the case with mac numbers, rather listed above each other. As for the sheet browser, to achieve it I believe the plus sign next to sheet tabs would be replaced by an icon to the sheet browser, and sheet tabs would include close buttons.

Also you may have to introduce more relative cell reference, next to the current method of course , such as B first, B last , an B @row. Last in particular would be very useful for mult-grid design since users would continually add more rows to grids. For analytics in the second grid, for example, you will have to put something like : secondgrid.B4=sum(firstgrid.B3:firstgrid.B last) for calculating sum, and for average it would be : secondgrid.B6=average(firstgrid.B3:firstgrid.B last) , and so on.

5

Thank you for the description, we are still discussing this suggestion internally. I will update this thread as soon as possible.

6

Dear @shagi
Thank you for your suggestions.
We have added them to internal track system:

  • Add the ability to work with multiple sheets (grids) on one screen
  • Add the ability to create groups to organize sheets
  • Add a sheet browser\sheet manager

Unfortunately, I cannot provide you with any guarantees of implementation or ETA at the moment. There is still a lot of work and internal discussions ahead. However, I will keep this thread open and will notify you once we have something to share.

8

These are great news. Good Luck to you and your colleagues trying to implement any of these ideas.

9

The sheet manager/ browser may have its difficulties . First each sheet would have its own action sequence meaning it should have its own undo and redo list in isolation with the other sheets ,unlike the current system that has one undo/redo list per workbook . Also creating cross-sheet formulas would be a challenge since all sheets are not leaded when you start a workbook. Consider a workbook as a containing folder with each sheet or page as a micro-file. A lot people may fairly argue against it since we already have file managers that can organize workbooks in folders and subfolders.

So please isolate this idea from the mult-grid idea . Failure for the sheet manager/browser to be implemented should not prevent the other idea from seeing the light . In it, I believe a sheet should be renamed a page. The multi-grid idea would bring plenty of benefits to users that are very hard to argue against and it is something that I have always wanted ever since I started using spreadsheets almost fifteen years ago. Converting from and to .xlsx format is something you will figure out, each grid, for example, would be converted to one full sheet and you can choose more than one grid to be converted as a workbook.

10

Thank you for your sharing. I can assure you that we are working on the implementation of these two ideas (multiple sheets (grids) on one screen and sheet browser\sheet manager) as separate, independent requests. The outcome of one of them shouldn’t affect the development of the other.

11

If you do not mind I will continue to add more ideas to my initial proposal. I hope I am not bothering anyone by doing so . I think each grid should have an apparent name that is visible and a one_word_name that is unique across the desktop. This would result in shorter formulas. Instead of typing sheet_name.grid_name.cell_reference, it would be just grid_name.cell _ref . Also you would be able to send or move a grid across the workbook without having to change its name. There should be also an arrow next to the apparent name that allows you to roll up the grid.When you hover on the apparent name a pop-up appears showing a description and the unique_name with a small copy icon next to it.

12

Thank you! Your description of the idea has been collected and added to previous suggestion (multiple sheets (grids) on one screen). We’re still working on that feature, I will update this thread once we have something to share.

14

I will continue to add more ideas to this thread. Perhaps one or two may inspire the dev team.

Another way to implement the multi grid idea in a simple manner is, Instead of having more than one grid per screen, you should have more than one screen per sheet, each screen featuring only one grid . The screens would be listed in the sidebar and you can jump between them via clicking.

I believe grids should always be limited . When you start a screen/grid it should always open with a standard grid that extends horizontally until , say column K, and vertically until, say row 20 . And you can refer to last cell in the column as K(last) or K20. Or even 20(last), from a horizontal perspective. And you can easily extend the grid via plus signs at the ends of it.
Limited grids are a lot smarter than unlimited grids from a user point of view and also a developer’s.

When you decide to pull down a formula till the end, you should be able to right click the cross sign and a dialogue box appears and you could enter K(last) , for example, as the cell the formula is dragged to , which means as long as you add rows via the plus sign to extend the grid, the formula will be dragged along to K(last).

When you add the filter/sort icon its range would be more defined with the existence of a last cell.The range, by default, would start from cell right under it till the last cell in the column, unless you establish a footer area. In unlimited grids, the range is not defined enough.

Another icon in tools ribbon should allow to designate a row as the start of the footer region, which should be excluded from the filter/sort ranges .Any rows you insert before that row is included in the filter/sort region and, after it , in the footer area , excluded from the effects of filter/sort.The last cell in the filter/sort range would always be the cell right above the footer range.
Filter/sort ranges should not allow for merged cells while footer regions allow for such things.

When you insert a row(s), you should right click a row and two options should appear in the menu : insert a no. of rows above , and insert a no. of rows below . And by clicking on any, a dialogue box appears asking you for the number of rows you want to add. And of course likewise for columns.

And of course, when printing , you could decide which screens are included in the print and which are not.

Multiple screens per sheet, each one featuring one limited grid , would allow for richer and smarter workbooks without significantly redesigning the tools. Each workbook would be made of multiple sheets horizontally , and each sheet would be made of multiple micro sheets vertically in the form of screens.
The earlier idea of sheet browser/manager may complement it as well.

15

Hello @shagi
Thank you for your ideas! They have been added to your suggestion, we will review them closely.
Unfortunately, I cannot provide with any additional information at the moment, because we are still working on your suggestions.